Children play during the inauguration celebrations in May 2008.

Knorr-Bremse Global Care is funding the construction and equipping of a vocational school.

The San Marcos region of south-west Guatemala is one of the poorest parts of the country. Most families make their living from growing corn and beans on smallholdings, and many of the fathers are also migrant workers in the highland coffee plantations and coastal fruit plantations. Their income fluctuates according to harvest yields and prices on world markets.

Knorr-Bremse Global Care funded the construction and equipping of a vocational school that is currently being built as part of an existing training center in San Marcos. The idea is to strengthen the region and open up alternatives to working in agriculture by offering training in technical occupations.

The other partner in this project is World Vision, an organization with which Knorr-Bremse Global Care successfully cooperated in 2005 over the reconstruction of 83 destroyed houses in the Indonesian province of Aceh.

In the vocational school, young people learn all about metalworking.

Global Care member Christoph Günter visited the training center in May 2008.