Yesterday was the one month anniversary of my first blog on adoptionblogs.com. Exciting, challenging, and very rewarding, blogging has opened up a whole new world to me. I’ve yet to even scratch the surface of the material I’d like to cover. Feel free to email with suggestions or comments; they are appreciated and important.

Just a reminder: you can post a question/comment privately to me by sending an email to guatemalablogger@adoptionmail.com .

On the occasion of this one month anniversary, I’ve been thinking a lot about Guatemala. Not unlike many other people who’ve completed international adoptions, I too feel that I’ve adopted a country as well as a child.

Guatemala is undeniably a third world country, and you realize that the minute you step out of the airport, where you are approached by small children trying to eke out a living by shining shoes or selling trinkets. These children’s faces just don’t leave my mind; some were mere toddlers, under the “protection” of an older sibling that looked no more than four or five years old.

With Guatemala on my mind, it is an opportune moment to share some statistics, retrieved from the "Guatemalan Poverty Assessment," a report prepared by the World Bank.

• Population of Guatemala - 12,293,545


• Guatemala is the poorest of all the Central American Countries

• 56% of Guatemalans live in poverty; of those 16% in extreme
poverty

• 81% of people classified as poor, and 93% classified as extremely poor live in the countryside (particularly in the northern and northwestern regions of the country)

• 76% of the indigenous population is classified as poor

• Malnutrition rates among Guatemalan children are among the highest in the world, and 44 % under the age of five are considered “stunted” in their growth

• Infant mortality rate - 45/1000 children per year; under five mortality rate - 56/1000 children per year; maternal mortality rate is 240/100,000 per live births

• life expectancy for men is 64; for women is 66; and for the native population is 44

• the doctor/patient ration is 1/2,356

• the labor force distribution: 50% agriculture; 15% industry; 35% services

• per capita income is reported as anywhere from $3,630 - $4,100.00

• eight million people are “informally employed or unemployed,” with only 3.4 million formally employed

• the illiteracy rate stands at 31%

• 60% of Guatemalan women are illiterate, with 80% of them from the rural indigenous regions of the country; 66% of girls in rural areas drop out of school before third grade; approximately 500,000 girls between 7-15 years of age (years of compulsory education), are missing from school.

Children needing families and material security are tragically abundant in Guatemala, and adoption, particularly foreign adoption has been a solution since the thirty-six year Civil War (1960-1996), which orphaned over a half a million children.

For additional statistics on Guatemala, check out the world bank website on Guatemalan statistics .