Lemonade International is a US-based non-profit community development organization that works in partnership with local Guatemalan leaders to educate and empower people in the largest urban slum in Central America – La Limonada in Guatemala City.
Our Story: Beginning in 1994, Tita Evertsz, a local Guatemalan woman and dear friend, began volunteering her time serving in La Limonada (“The Lemonade” in English), even after her church leaders encouraged her not to go there. Her own past included drugs and an abusive relationship so she could relate to the struggle of the people there. She would push her children in a stroller while carrying a pot of rice and beans to share with people in the community. She began building relationships with gang members and the people on the street. Years of serving the community and witnessing cycles of poverty, drug abuse, violence and death, reaffirmed Tita’s conviction that she had to do more.
Tita established “Vidas Plenas” (which means “full lives” in English) in 2001. As a Guatemalan NGO, the foundation strives to reach out to the street children in the community – to rescue them from the gang culture that rules the streets of La Limonada. Over the next few years La Escuelita (The Little School) was established, providing a spiritual safe haven, education, healthy meals, hygiene and scholarships to attend formal schools in Guatemala City.
In 2004, the first group from the US, including the founders of Lemonade International, served with Tita in La Limonada, and helped raise funds to expand La Escuelita. A life long friendship emerged from this trip which led Bill and Cherie Cummings, Leah Craver and Donnie Long to establish Lemonade International in 2008.
Today, Lemonade International serves as a federally recognized, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated in the State of North Carolina. Our community development work includes two schools in La Limonada, impacting the lives of more than 350 children every year, along with a scholarship program, a thriving church community, a vocational training program, a micro-enterprise program, and a safe home, providing a refuge for abandoned, abused and neglected children.
Education, access to quality healthcare and job creation are imperative to providing sustainable solutions for the children and families who call La Limonada home. Lemonade International has big plans for the future. We are committed to expanding into other barrios (neighborhoods) within La Limonada, as well as establishing a vocational training center and a walk-in medical clinic.
“And if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.” – Isaiah 58:10