Long Way Home is a non-profit organization originating in the United States that seeks to bring together resources to empower youth to realize their full potential by fostering civic interaction, creating educational opportunities and encouraging healthy lifestyles. Our current project has us in San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala, working with the Guatemalan Maya to construct an ecological park and recreation center.

The name Long Way Home was conceived as a symbol for the daily journey of a rural Mayan farmer.

Traditionally, the farmer leaves home at dawn to till the fields all day with his young children who are often not able to attend the local school because their share of labor is necessary for the family’s economic survival. Quite often, a family of ten might bring home a daily income of three dollars eating only tortillas with salt as the nutritional mainstay. In such cases, children, parents, and grandparents are regularly seen carrying heavy loads of firewood tied to their backs as they return home from a long day of work in the fields. Therefore, Long Way Home stands for the difficult life that Mayan children and adults endure without schooling or venues for building self-esteem and excellence.

Long Way Home is comprised of employees, interns, and volunteers who have been trained to work in the specific geographical, cultural, and political climate of the mountainous highlands of central Guatemala. The diversity of the Long Way Home staff provides a variety of necessary skills: permaculture and horticulture techniques, appropriate technology, spanish and Mayan languages, water treatment, and teaching. The organization offers a volunteer program and internships.

Long Way Home is a small organization that emphasizes long-term development and self-sustaining growth through a joint effort of Long Way Home, which helps initiate and finance projects, and local groups, which maintain and sustain the projects over time. The group chooses projects that not only benefits particular communities but that can be completed in efficiently and cost-effectively in regards to time, funds, and natural resources. We rely heavily on volunteers and a small but dedciated and active officer corp, staff and board of directors.