The Tamarindo youth group has been serving the Guarjilan community for the past 20 years under the leadership of John Guiliano, a former Jesuit seminarian who has worked in Mexico and El Salvador as a community organizer since 1984. The youth group's original goals were to foster a community for both children and adults in the aftermath of a 12 year long civil war (1980-1992) that devastated the country. Their primary focus after the war was to help recreate family and town structures both physically and spiritually.
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Today, the Tamarindo has evolved into an actively working community organization that seeks to provide economic and social opportunities in Guarjila in order to counter many of the problems the community faces including drug abuse, domestic violence, family separation due to immigration, as well as the trauma of civil war.
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Through sport, creativity, love, charity, respect, responsibility, pride, leadership, education, and economic growth, the Tamarindo Youth group continues to empower the men and woman of Guarjila, El Salvador.
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f If you would like to further support the Tamarindo Community or the work of John Guiliano, please visit:
What is the Tamarindo Foundation?
Work Plan​
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Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hate, sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is dismay, hope;
where there is shadow, light;
where there is arrogance, humility;
where there is sorrow, joy;
Oh Divine Teacher, grant me
not to look for consolation,
but to console
not to look for love, but to love
because giving is how we receive
forgiving is how you forgive
and dying in you
is how we are born in Eternal Life.
Amen
Building the Tamarindo-Lewis & Clark Connection:
Over the past three years, almost 30 ambassadors from Lewis & Clark have gotten the privilege to travel to Guarjila, El Salvador to join the Tamarindo family. We have been welcomed into their community with open arms where we lived, cooked, cleaned, hiked, learned and played together. We have all been personally effected by this experience and what we have shared with this community. Guarjila has served as a living classroom, in which we have learned as much about our selves as we have about history By replacing a textbook with a new found friend, we have been able to view issues through a different lens by focusing on human connections, root causes, and ground-up solutions. We now know that the problems Guarjila faces are the same problems our own communities' face. More importantly, that these problems are not simple, and that there is no correct answers, but through love, and community we can at least find some peace.
