Giving Back
At Casa Paloma, one of our central goals is to provide meaningful employment and opportunities for career growth to the indigenous community of San Marcos la Laguna, where we are based.
We’re proud that the majority of our staff—from our property manager, chef and kitchen crew, cleaning team, gardeners, builders, stone masons, massage therapist and food providers are local people from within the community. When you come to come to the lake, you’ll get to know some of our great team.
In addition to creating jobs, we are committed to giving back to the community in the form of scholarships for young people to learn the trades of cooking, carpentry, sewing, barber and electrician skills, and more. To date, donations from workshops and retreats at Casa Paloma have funded more than thirty trade school scholarships and other projects in the town of San Marcos La Laguna.
Cost of our retreats and workshops is all inclusive, but we ask that guests contribute to a tip pool for our great staff. You will see, when you meet them, that for the people of San Marcos, offering a warm welcome and ensuring that guests have a great experience at Lake Atitlán is more than a job. Every person we hire works hard to make sure your experience will be an unforgettable one.
Finally, for those visiting the lake who take a particular interest in making a contribution, we’re happy to connect you with local organizations offering nutrition, educational opportunities, health care, and other services. We once hosted a professional basketball coach who ended up running a weeklong clinic for local girls on the court in town that people in the village still talk about, years later.
If you’d like to know how you can support the local community, just ask us.
The Shoe Giveaway
We want every guest who stays at Casa Paloma to know—along with every retreat leader or host of a special family event— that your choice to stay with us or host your gathering here contributes to the livelihood of well over a dozen indigenous families in the village of San Marcos la Laguna and beyond.
In addition to the scholarship assistance we give to deserving young people in the community, we’ve established a tradition of asking every guest who can to stick a few pairs of children’s shoes into their suitcase—new or gently used—for our annual shoe giveaway to children in the community.
Over the twenty years we’ve been collecting and distributing the gift of zapatos, we’ve given away over a thousand pairs of sneakers. Some of us have been lucky enough to see their faces when they lace them up and race down the path to show their family. Some past shoe recipients are parents themselves now who stop us on the road to say “When I was very young, you gave me my first pair of sneakers.”
Of course it’s not a requirement that retreats at Casa Paloma include a gift of shoes for the village. But if you’d like your guests to participate, we won’t have a hard time finding deserving recipients for your gifts.
Our Green Policy
Lake Atitlan, and the surrounding lands, are a place of stunning beauty and an irreplaceable resource for the people of Guatemala, particularly the Mayan indigenous community. Living as we do on the shores of this deep volcanic caldera, we take seriously the responsibility to avoid chemicals that could upset the natural infrastructure of the land and water. We are committed to using organic cleaning products and recycle trash.
Though mosquitos and other insects are seldom a problem, guests to Casa Paloma should be advised that they will probably see a particular kind of spider on the walls. These spiders are small and harmless; they do not bite. To rid the property of them would require us to use harmful chemicals. We’d rather see a few spiders.