Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Christmas Tamale Basket Drive

If you're starting to get into the holiday spirit and looking for a Christmas charity, this might just be the ticket!

As I have mentioned, Michael and I will be going down to Guatemala next month to help with some of Mayan Families' service projects. One of the projects is putting together the Christmas Tamale Baskets.

The Guatemalan Christmas tradition is to have a special tamale meal at midnight. Unfortunately, there are a great many indigenous people who cannot afford to eat much of anything for Christmas. This year has made it even more difficult, now that food prices have risen 38% in Guatemala.

So one of Mayan Families' major projects is putting together baskets containing all the fixings for a traditional tamale meal and distributing them to needy families.

However, they can't do it without support! Mayan Families relies on donors to sponsor the estimated 800 baskets that are needed.


You can help! For $35 you can give a Christmas Tamale Basket and feed a family of 12 or more. The Christmas basket is made of plastic and will be used afterwards by the family to stack and wash dishes, hold food, etc. The food items will include: oil, 15 lbs of rice to make the tamales, a block of drinking chocolate (this is traditional to drink at midnight), a loaf of bread with which they eat the tamales at midnight, raisins for the tamales, grapes, apples, sugar for the tamales, 5lbs of meat, tomatoes, one pound of coffee, and leaves to wrap the tamales.

If you would like to donate, please follow this link: http://www.mayanfamilies.org/christmas.htm.

I will be posting tons of photos from our experience, so if you are able to contribute, you'll be able to see your money at work.

1 comment:

alexlady said...

mmm, tamales. what a great tradition, maybe we will do that this year.

i thought tamales were made of corn? i'm gonna go wiki that now.

www.alexladydesigns.etsy.com