Child Sponsorship Background from San Cristóbal, Guatemala

SOS Children's Village San Cristóbal

SOS Children's Village San Cristóbal is situated at San Cristóbal, municipality of Mixco, about 10 km west of Guatemala City. The first children moved into the SOS Children's Village at the end of 1996. Most of them came from Guatemala's first SOS Children's Village San Juan Sacatepéquez, which had been transformed into an SOS Social Centre. The place was chosen in order to create a new home for the children from SOS Children's Village San Juan Sacatepéquez and for other abandoned and orphaned children from the capital.

The SOS Children's Village consists of a number of family houses, which have room for nine children and a baby each, the village director's house and an administrative building. Many tropical trees and bushes make the site a nice place to live.

Other SOS Projects in San Cristóbal

At San Cristóbal, there is also an SOS Youth Home for girls, which consists of several houses with youth communities and a library. At a certain age, girls move to this facility in order to prepare for later independent living. There are girls from San Cristóbal, but also from other Guatemalan SOS Children's Villages who are doing their education or training in Guatemala City.

Background to San Cristóbal

Ciudad San Cristóbal (or San Cristobal City) is the largest city in the municipality of Mixco, and part of the department of Guatemala and is home to around 150,000 (one quarter of the Mixco municipality)

One of the biggest housing developments near Guatemala City, it was developed in 1973 and spans over more than 10 square kilometers.  It is separated from the capital by a canyon, which had made it previously very difficult to develop. The San Cristobal Bridge, enables people to easily reach the new development from the city. At first only two lanes, the bridge had to be later expanded to 4 lanes to accommodate the enormous amount of traffic going and coming from the city.