Good News November 2025

November, 2025

Dear Donor,

Flying home now from an amazing trip. I know my message in these letters has always been upbeat, but really, everything is “firing on all cylinders” in our efforts there, and Vicki and I have never felt more positive about the work the Derr Foundation is doing in Guatemala.

We are providing 75 junior high, high school and college scholarships through five different scholarship coordinators and we met with all but one of them (who is currently in the US). We also had a day long meeting with the team that implements our program for 150 (in 2025) youth with capacities that are different. And we met in person or remotely with 4 of those students and with 3 families. I came away from all of it, really proud of what your support is accomplishing.

We started with a meeting with Sister Ericka who runs the Internado, or boarding facility, for young women from more remote parts of the country who want to attend Anunciata (a first class primary, junior high and high school where Sister Ericka is also a lead administrator) across the street from the Internado. There were 38 young women living at the Internado in 2025 who attended school at Anunciata for free thanks, in part, to your support. We made a $5000 contribution to their 2026 budget while there.

Next we met with Maria Mendoza Mendoza, an indigenous public interest lawyer who selected, monitored and offered workshops to 40 of our scholarship recipients in 2025. We re-upped at the same level for another year while deciding to gradually decrease the geographic area we’ve asked her to cover. And we met with Asociación Unidos por la Vida, which handles 30 more of our scholarships and also re-upped for 2026.

Finally, we received a day-long progress report from the 4 psychologists and 2 master teachers who work with our youth with unconventional capacities. (We refer to the team by a Spanish acronym, CAIICAD.)

CAIICAD worked with and then returned 62 of our 150 students back to regular school during the year and gave 35 workshops for regular classroom teachers working with our students. (We anticipate 60 new students with short term needs again in 2026. The rest of our students will be with us longer and some indefinitely.)

Most importantly, we concluded our CAIICAD meeting visiting with 3 of our long term students and their families, and with a 32 year old clerical worker who received a cane and instruction on it’s use (and who wanted to express his thanks for a much improved  lifestyle.)  The challenges all of them face, the courage they exhibit, and their testimony about the help we provide moved us to tears.

In total we distributed $70,000 to these programs for 2026 (and will distribute $8000 more in January) and are bringing home to all of you their thanks, their hugs and a few tears.

So… many thanks, hugs and a few tears to you,

Bruce Martin

President,

Derr Foundation

Scholarship student and Bruce

Psychologists, Teachers, Bruce and Vicki

Mother and Student at CAIICAD