When Greg Lowden traveled to Guatemala in 2011, he expected to be there for a year studying child sexual abuse in marginalized communities.

But as he sat before his computer in Guatemala City crunching numbers, he was drawn to know more about the children in his study.

So, with the help of Guatemalan friends, Lowden pushed past the numbers and discovered so much more.

“My Guatemalan friends taught me the importance of understanding context from the ground and not parachuting into Guatemala to try to fix everything,” he shared. With their help, Lowden quickly recognized the pitfalls of adopting a “white savior” mentality.

Today, after thousands of conversations and observations Lowden is still in Guatemala working to help the young people of Guatemala City break out from poverty through education, sexual awareness training, and care for teen mothers and their children.

Lowden’s nonprofit Guatemalan Youth Initiative (Iniciativa Guatemala) works on behalf the children in the area around the Guatemala City landfill – the biggest in Central America where more than a third of the nation’s total trash ends up.

An estimated 80,000 people live nearby the landfill and some 165,000 around the ravine where the landfill is located. Half are children. Shackled by extreme poverty, many survive by scavenging recyclable materials from the wasteland to earn a meager living.

Lowden said he was shaken to the core by the multitude of challenges faced by these vulnerable children. Social, political, physical, and psychological barriers loomed large over their lives.

Determined to make a difference after his one-year research assignment, Lowden rolled up his sleeves and joined forces with local aid workers for more hands-on work.

The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia helped him start his work in Guatemala and continued to support his calling to serve the least of these after Lowden established a 501(c)(3) nonprofit Guatemala Youth Initiative (GYI).

“The Episcopal Church provided us with our initial funding and continues to support our work,” Lowden said.

That early support created a foundation for his mission to create lasting change for children who once were often parents by default but now are building strong lives due to Lowden’s transformative endeavor.

Lowden and his team of 30 Guatemalan staff at GYI are breaking the cycle of teen pregnancy and empowering the next generation, by providing the resources and support they need to build a brighter, more prosperous life for themselves and their community.

GYI has become a beacon drawing marginalized youth in these communities, offering life-changing education, essential health services, and vital community support. The initiative takes a holistic approach to empower young people to address immediate challenges like caring for a child or exiting an abusive relationship while also setting goals toward brighter futures for themselves and their families.

Lowden’s connection to Guatemala has grown over time.

He met his wife Jesica Zirion there, and they now have two girls ages 5 and 3.

“She helped co-found the organization’s current mission around teen pregnancy, is deputy director, and was the architect of our work with teen mothers at GYI,” Lowden said.

Reflecting on his life’s unexpected trajectory during a phone interview from Guatemala, Lowden said he was surprised at the path that unfolded before him.

“I never envisioned this life while growing up in Orlean, Virginia,” he said. It was only after obtaining a business degree from the University of Virginia and working an unfulfilling accounting job that Lowden began recalling the sermons he heard as a child at Leeds Episcopal Church.

Growing up in the nurturing embrace of Leeds Episcopal Church in Markham, Virginia, had planted something within him, leading Lowden to question how he could best use his career and skillset to serve the less fortunate.

His parents were encouraging when he expressed his dissatisfaction with his life, and Lowden began focusing on becoming an international aid worker.

His search led him to the world of international development, where he found an opportunity to work in Uganda. Required to raise his own resources, Lowden turned to The Episcopal Church, the Diocese of Virginia, and his home parish, for support to begin his journey as a missionary.

His next posting was in Guatemala where Lowden furthered his commitment to serving others by founding the Guatemala Youth Initiative. “I’ve been doing this work ever since,” he said.

“Our initial strategy was to identify established, talented Guatemalan nonprofits, strengthen their existing work with youth-at-risk, and expand into new areas together,” he explained.

Later, Lowden said, GYI’s board wanted to evaluate the root causes of the issues the organization was trying to address and focus its resources accordingly. This decision prompted a major course correction for GYI in 2017.

To better understand the needs of at-risk youth, GYI conducted a study that involved focus groups with community members and youth.

“They kept emphasizing that family brokenness was the biggest issue they faced,” Lowden recalled. This insight laid the foundation for GYI’s more targeted approach, focusing on addressing the underlying issues and empowering youth to create positive change in their lives and communities.

It became evident that the core issue wasn’t gang violence, lack of education, or poverty, but the disintegration of families and the resulting trauma and neglect experienced by children. This, in turn, drove young people to seek a sense of identity and belonging elsewhere, often on the streets and with gangs.

To delve further into this issue, Lowden convened a focus group consisting of local teachers and psychologists working with at-risk youth. During this discussion, he posed an uncomfortable yet crucial question: “How many of these families are the result of stable relationships and a genuine desire to have and raise children, rather than simply unprotected sex?”

Following a moment of silence, one of the teachers stood up and admitted, “I don’t think any of them are planned at all. They just come one after another without any planning.” This response validated Lowden’s concerns and revealed a critical area that GYI then decided to address.

The study shifted GYI’s focus to the experiences of pregnant teenagers and young mothers. Lowden and his team sought to understand whether these individuals had received any form of sex education or guidance on using contraception and if they had access to such resources. The findings that roughly 60 percent of youth at risk in the community were born to a teen mother confirmed that this was indeed an area that needed immediate attention.

Having identified a pressing issue that had been largely unaddressed by other nonprofits in the landfill communities, Lowden knew where GYI should focus its efforts.

“We knew what our focus needed to be, and we remodeled everything,” he said.

Today, the Guatemala Youth Initiative continues to refine its work. It targets addressing teen pregnancy, educating young people about sexual and reproductive health, and promoting responsible family planning and childrearing practices, said Board Chair Scotney Young.

Young, who began volunteering at GYI in 2019 while living there said she was drawn to it because of the focus on using sexual and reproductive health education to break the cycle of poverty in Guatemala.

Through this work, GYI is supporting vulnerable youth, fostering healthier families, and contributing to the overall well-being of their communities.

Lowden said GYI’s four programs address specific challenges faced by youth living near the landfill.

Comprehensive Sexuality Education equips young individuals with age-appropriate sexual education, empowering them to make informed decisions regarding their reproductive health and family planning.

Access to Contraception is provided in collaboration with another NGO of local healthcare providers – WINGS – to offer accessible and free contraceptive options to youth in need.

A Teen Parenting Program offers tailored workshops and support systems for teenage parents to help them develop the necessary skills to raise healthy, well-adjusted children and care for themselves.

Early Childhood Development classes, where parent and child attend together, help parents cultivate their child’s cognitive, social, emotional, and motor development during the first three years after birth.

GYI’s approach has had an impact on the lives of thousands of young women in Guatemala City. Its programs and dedication to youth empowerment have resulted in reduced unplanned pregnancies, improved educational outcomes, and a thriving culture of health and well-being within the communities it serves.

Board Chair Young said Lowden’s insistence on documenting and evaluating programs has been key to securing funding by proving GYI’s effectiveness. She also credits the organization’s decision to focus on a few core programs rather than diversifying excessively has ensured sustainable growth.

“It’s one of the reasons why I’ve stayed on with Iniciativa Guatemala, because, yeah, I’ve worked with a lot of NGO’s that that will change their name, change their mission, change everything just to get funding, and then it’s not very sustainable,” Young said.

Another thing that strengthened GYI has been expanding the board to include more Guatemalan members and achieve a better gender balance, Young said.

“It’s just really been a really great honor, actually, to kind of support the organization in the way that it’s grown and be able to be a part of that,” Young said.

The organization’s success has captured the attention and support of entities recognizing the importance of investing in youth empowerment and sustainable development in Guatemala.

In addition to the foundational support provided by The Episcopal Church, GYI has earned significant backing from organizations including:

• Foundation For A Better World, which funds global development to improve equality and empower underprivileged children.
• The Luis von Ahn Foundation, founded by Luis von Ahn, a Guatemalan entrepreneur who invented reCAPTCHA and co-founded of Duolingo, focused on improving women’s and girl’s equality in Guatemala.
• The Summit Foundation focused on supporting gender equality in Central America, especially girls’ empowerment where some 25% of girls become mothers before age 19. Rates of gender-based violence and femicide are also among the world’s highest.
• The Columbus Foundation’s Ann C Dater Fund, focused on women’s reproductive health in Latin America in honor of Ann Dater who dedicated her resources to those in need, especially women’s equality.
• The Ward Foundation, funding education for underserved people in Guatemala.

These collaborators have expanded GYI’s reach, providing crucial resources and opportunities to a greater number of young people in Guatemala. GYIs willingness to work with a diverse range of partners and its determination to overcome prejudice in the pursuit of positive change is, as Lowden describes it, the “secret sauce” of GYI’s success.

Rodrigo Barillas, the Global Director of the Luis von Ahn Foundation, first partnered with Lowden in 2017 when Barillas was working at another nonprofit in Guatemala focused on providing contraceptives to young women.

Barillas said GYI first received funding from the Luis von Ahn Foundation in 2021 because it was doing “incredible work.”

“The reason this organization has stayed on as a grantee with every year increasing amounts of money is because we believe in what they’re doing, believe in their mission.” Barillas said. “We appreciate the work they’re doing. It’s a local staff. And even though he is from Virginia, Greg has spent a lot more time in and around the city dump than most Guatemalans have in all their lives. And so, he is incredibly invested in the future of that community.”

Summit Foundation’s Director of Equality for Women and Girls Kathy Hall said she became aware of GYI in 2019.

“When I was in Guatemala for other reasons, I was able to visit and I just ended up having this sense that Summit had to find some room to provide support because I was just so impressed with what GYI  was doing. So, our first grant to them was in 2021 and we have provided between $20,000 and 25,000 a year since and we are on the verge of approving GYI’s first two-year grant.”

Hall, whose foundation has funded nonprofits in Guatemala for 20 years said she continues to be impressed by the impact of GYI.

“I’ve seen a lot and we work in many different impoverished areas of Guatemala. But where Guatemala Youth Initiative has chosen to work has just extraordinary challenges. The intergenerational poverty and women’s low status are just so pervasive and their theory of change is that we need to break these cycles and I think what they’re doing is working. It’s starting to have really positive impacts on the young women and wider community.” Hall said.

Over the past five years, GYI has partnered with dozens of NGOs and 10 schools in at-risk communities surrounding the Guatemala City trash dump. GYI’s work also extends to providing contraception to women within churches in these communities and offering sexuality education to students in Episcopal, Evangelical, and in Catholic schools.

Lowden said by forming these connections and working toward a common goal, GYI and its partners are creating lasting change and empowering young people to build brighter futures for themselves and their communities.

“And most recently, we’ve gotten partners to open the door for us to do youth friendly spaces for sexual and reproductive health. And we also partner with the Guatemalan government’s Ministry of Health for a teen pregnancy program,” Lowden said.

“From 2018 to now we have grown from a budget of $80,000 and a couple staff to a budget of around $500,000 a year and about 30 people on our team.”

Asked what GYI still needs Lowden immediately said, “more individual donors.”

“Some individuals have been with us from the start, but we need more because what we’ve learned is that individuals who support our work are our best ambassadors. They talk about GYI to their friends, coworkers, civic groups and at their churches. Then those people become donors and ambassadors.”

How to help:

Online donations can be made through GYI’s website. Donors can choose to make a one-time or recurring contribution using a credit card or PayPal.

Checks payable to “Guatemala Youth Initiative” can be sent to: Guatemala Youth Initiative, PO Box 1153, Bealeton, VA 22712.

U.S. fundraising events, such as charity auctions or benefit dinners are also needed. Lowden said.

For more read GYIs latest 2023 annual report or contact Lowden at greg@iniciativaguatemala.org or at (540) 605-4005.