Sowing Opportunities is building agricultural capacity, resources, and leadership in remote indigenous villages and public primary schools in Guatemala.

We are providing the resources for destitute villages and schools in Eastern Alta Verapaz, Guatemala for the cultivation of their land in greenhouse agriculture, which is helping them to become food secure, gain a trade, have regular school lunches, have a budding economy, and this serves as a deterrent for making the dangerous and uncertain journey north.

We got started when our now 21-year-old daughter, adopted from an extremely remote, indigenous region of Guatemala, asked in 2011 to meet her biological mom.

In 2022, following a needs assessment, we began an agricultural project in our daughter’s biological village, in the highlands of Eastern Alta Verapaz.  Fast forward to 2025, our most engaged year ever!  We have added one village each year and now we are now working with four villages!

And this year, we also added two schools!  Working with schools allows us to reach more families, as the students teach their parents what they’ve learned.     

The people now are starting to have hope in a destitute, forgotten region where there is no trade or tourism, there is barely any infrastructure and there are no other NGOs.

Younger generations are seeing the value of staying in Guatemala rather than attempt a perilous journey to the U.S. with an extremely low chance of success.  

The most amazing collaboration is with our second school, a regional school in Fray Bartolomé de las Casas. 150 students have built seven double-greenhouses, from scratch, including clearing the land of trees, gathering wood to build the greenhouses, and bringing fertile soil down the mountain.  In under six months, they have had two harvests! The students are economically disadvantaged, and the teachers care for them as if they were their own children, helping the students have success at their greenhouses.  

In 2026, we are adding four additional schools, to increase the number of families served in the region.