Volunteers support Guatelmala's poor: Minnesota family overcomes obstacles for Godchild Project

National Catholic Reporter, March 3, 1995 by Dawn Gibeau

Initially, the project found sponsoring godparents in Minnesota, and although, sponsors today live in perhaps 30 states and include a few in Europe, 80 percent are in Minnesota. Dave and Betty Huebsch, learning that the people's top priority was schools and that they did not want to wait two years until permanent ones could be built, created temporary ones, using the stone and cornstalk construction prevalent in the area.

Today, the project continues to percolate. About half the funds needed for the Family Development Center have been raised, and the first building, a vocational school, is nearly complete.

The foundation has been poured for a second building, living quarters for 24 long-term volunteers to share as a base community. The building also will house a dinning room for all workers and a kitchen and laundry that will serve the complex.

Next on the agenda is a building to contain offices for social workers, living space for short-term volunteers and a warehouse for receiving shipments from the United States.

More funds will be needed to finance the next three buildings: a clinic containing a dental office, laboratory, x-ray and examination rooms a building devoted to surgery that will enable the project to host a surgical teach every month, and a sixth building where patient beds will fill the first floor. The second floor will have rooms for patients' families.

"There will be no problem getting teams" for surgery, the younger Huebsch said. "People from California and New York, from Dartmouth and Virginia and all over want to come down."

Today John envisions a day when the Godchild Project might grow too much, might become impersonal and weaken. To avoid that, he is considering limiting the number of godchildren to 1,100. Once that number is reached, he speculated, maybe we'll work at that level until we really get established, then maybe consider some satellite project in nearby towns" or starting anew elsewhere.

Santiago Atitlan may provide a precedent for moving on. Although Dave and Betty Huebsch left the schools there sooner than they anticipated, "the plan always was to turn them over" eventually, John said. In Antigua, with the number of godchildren at 875 and plenty of construction remaining, his focus remains on finding fresh faces and funds to open avenues to health and self-sustenance for Guatemala's poorest families.