Last we spoke, I was telling you about this great group of young people that we met in Santa Anita. They go by the moniker BUILD which stands for "Building Understanding through International Learning and Development". Pretty tight acronym, in my opinion.
BUILD is made up of students from Boston's Tufts University. They are an "interdisciplinary student-led program" of the Institute for Global Leadership there at Tufts. In their own words: "BUILD seeks to educate and immerse students in the theory and practice of sustainable development by partnering with rural communities in the developing world to research and implement sustainable initiatives for human, social, and economic development". SHABANG!
The BUILDers went to Santa Anita and formed a relationship with the community. In doing this they worked with SA to write a "community development plan" which examined what SA felt they needed to work on in order to get the community where it wants to be. They worked with Guatemalan government agencies, US development groups, NGOs, private companies, and others to get support for the plan. And they had great success.