We have been supporting this particular charitable group for several years now. It has been really fun and satisfying to see how their reach and results have expanded over time.
This is a group that is making tangible progress and improving children's lives and futures.

Avivara is doing great things for impoverished kids and families in Guatemala - supporting schools and helping kids reach college through mentorship and direct financial support. Their impacts are long-term (multi-generational) and widely felt. This is a very small but effective organization. Dollars are wisely spent and not wasted.

I have been supporting Avivara for 5 years now and watched it grow significantly. I am continually impressed with the great strides and advances in education this limited staff organization brings to the children of Guatemala. Gustavo Valle and his team on the ground in Guatemala are working with schools, especially in the rural areas, to provide a better education to those who are so poorly served. I was recently impressed with their story of a young woman who was the first in village to attend high school.
The local board is a very dedicated and energetic group and I believe they will make a difference, one child, one school at a time. I highly recommend this organization for their commitment and dedication and the differences they make with limited resources. Five stars!

Avivara adheres to the highest philosophical principles of social justice - asking what students and teaching staff in rural schools want, rather than imposing an outside vision. And the work is effective and meaningful. And it is performed gracefully by merely a three person staff. This is a rare combination.

Avivara put almost all of their fundraising into programs of grants to schools and scholarships for students. They have supported some students all the way to professional school! They work very effectively with Guatemalan educators.

This organization meets the communities it serves where they are at. Together they set the priorities and move together from there. They not only provide needed school supplies, but educate the teachers and parents - working with whole communities! Their scholarship program for older youth continues to grow. After visiting and working with them at the rural schools and at that time an after school program, I feel confident their work is essential to rural Guatemalan schools and they are making a difference by serving the communities and teaching the communities how to continue and grow in educating their children as well as adult leaders.

Avivara is a really special non-profit - a partnership between the people of US and Guatemala where education is promoted and students are empowered in some of the most impoverished and forgotten areas in rural Guatemala. On a programmatic level, Avivara listens to the Guatemalan communities it serves using its funds very expediently, always evolving and adjusting to the needs of the Guatemalan community it works in, including adjusting for natural disasters. When Avivara commits to providing a scholarship for a child, they support that child all the way through college, if desired. It is an honor and privilege to serve on the Board and I believe Avivara is a great model of how a multi-national grassroots NGO can make a strong impact with small but dedicated team and resource base.

I have visited the programs and people Avivara serves. It is an incredibly effective organization. They are diligent about using funding to make the most impact while also having the communities choose where they need assistance rather than imposing their own ideas.
My personal favorite program is their scholarship program. Teachers recommend students who have the personal drive to succeed in school, but lack the resources needed. Rather than dropping out in 3rd grade, Avivara will help a student with the cost of school until they graduate from high school. Then they become bread winners for their family and it breaks the cycle that often exists with poverty. Every month students have a meeting with Avivara staff. The parents, grandparents, and other family members are all on board to help the child succeed and everyone is grateful.

This is an amazing organization worth supporting. Every dollar makes a difference! Seeing all of this first-hand is why I am now a board member and a donor.

As an organization that has worked in partnership with Avivara on the ground in Guatemala, I can highly recommend this nonprofit. They are highly transparent, very well organized and diligent about ensuring that donations go directly to their projects. Avivara truly deserves to be a top-rated nonprofit!

I am a friend of the founders of Avivara, visiting them in Guatemala in January 2015. I joined Ann on a number of forays to the schools Avivara provides support during the time I was there. The enthusiasm, warmth, and excitement from the teachers and students of each school we visited was tremendous. This was not feigned in the slightest since we visited the schools 2-3 times during the time I was there. They found meaningful work, such as cleaning and organizing a library and painting a school. Avivara is invited by the communities/schools they help and the results show that when people are active in the change they want to see, it occurs. We also ran into adults, who because of Avivara scholarships when they were younger, are now successful business people giving back to their communities. No better testament to the effectiveness of an organization, by having the very people you help follow your example.

I live in Guatemala and have visited the work of the Avivara staff several times. Each time I've come away impressed with their commitment with working directly with people, in this case teachers, students, parents, and community members in rural communities of Guatemala, to listen to their voices and in dialogue and support of those needs. Whether through scholarship support, school books and materials, teacher trainings around reading, science, and math curriculum, or the wonderfully creative year long weekly art classes with elementary schools, Avivara is doing the good work. I wholeheartedly endorse this team and this organization! The founders, Ann and Gary, and Gustavo their decades long program director, are all individuals of the highest integrity and commitment. Kudos to them for finding just the right way to support people at the grassroots in ways which allow them individual expression and participation. At the same time, Avivara gives support, through accounting and administration, to other organizations with like-minded missions and commitment. The world is a better place because of the staff and founders of Avivara!

Avivará is an exceptional NGO working towards higher quality education in Guatemala. In a world where many think they have the answer and show up to deliver the solution, Avivará centers their work on an active consultation process with locals to co-design programs that make sense for each unique context.

Beyond their work in Guatemala, they also make a significant effort to educate their supporters about the complex dynamics of poverty in Guatemala. This includes sharing stories from their participants along with newspaper articles and inviting people to visit and participate in their work first-hand.

I highly recommend this organization for donors, volunteers, and those generally interested in education in Guatemala.

I serve on the Board of Avivara, and have since its inception. Over the years the organization has stayed true to its mission, and has proven its ability to alter lives in rural Guatemala through the possibilities of education. In the face of growth and success, Avivara remains remarkably efficient at utilizing contributions to achieve its aims; administration and fund raising costs are very low. By keeping in close contact with its scholarship recipients, for example, Avivara is able to provide encouragement and guidance to those individuals. This support helps to ensure the effective use of resources. The organization has supported a number of individuals into and through their university education - this would have been a nearly impossible goal for these individuals. Avivara changes lives, one at a time, through education.

We have partnered with Rotary, Church and Interact to help effectively raise money and awareness about education in Guatemala. One of the best run organizations I have had the chance to work with over the past 10 years.

Avivara, with only 3 people on their staff, two of whom I think work with little or no monetary pay and their key change agent, a Guatemalan teacher/administrator, are doing more to support education in rural communities here than any other organization in town, including the national/local government. They listen to the needs of the teachers; they respond. They train the teachers, many of whom have never had any form of real staff development. They supply schools with materials, with small, vibrant libraries, with art lessons where Ann models great teaching practices with the local classroom teacher, often with more than 30 in their class and certainly no sink to clean the brushes or their hands. They work tirelessly to empower students via scholarships, counsel, smiles and a more well equipped, responsive classroom than most public school students in rural Guatemala and many urban ones too, will ever know. I love Avivara and I admire the work they do, ever to quietly, humbly and significantly here. I love showing up at their end of year celebrations and hearing the testimonies, the stories and the endless thanks the hundreds of children and their families they are working for and with. This nonprofit is a model of true grassroots empowerment for all of us and "far exceeds expectations"! Thank you, Avivara, for being present in ways that so matter.

Avivara is one organization that is spreading development for several families and communities .
has been a very important for the education of children and youth in Guatemala. is providing financial support and capable students who wish to continue their education on to the secondary level.
All donors , thank you very much for your support, because investing in education is to change lives .
I am one of the scholarship students, I thank everyone for your support and I'm almost to finish my degree in Business Administration .
AVIVARA is very important for my personal development.
Thank you so much Gary, Ann and Gustavo for everything. You are awesome people. AVIVARA is part of my life.

My wife & I have been happy to help Avivara & there wonderful staff for years. The help they bring to the Guatemalan community & how it effects there future is fantastic. It is truly a blessing when you have such a positive effect on a child's life as Avivara does. The entire Avivara staff are truly a blessing & we are happyto help when we can. Keep up the great work.

Keep The Blessings Coming

Frank & Perla Whitson

Avivara is a very hands on, high impact organization doing some incredible work in rural areas of Guatemala. For over 7 years Avivara has provided funding and educational opportunities for promising students who otherwise would likely not have been able to continue their education. Today almost 90 students are able to continue their studies because of Avivara support, ranging from grade school to university levels. In addition, Avivara funding supports rural schools directly with teachng materials and training by the mostly volunteer Avivara staff, who are all trained educators. Avivara is exremely efficient, with about 94% of funds going directly to programs in 2014. If you believe that education is a key element to improving lives, I urge you to support Avivara.