Hope Dancing

The astounding true story of a young woman’s courage and persistence despite threats, extortion and her own kidnapping, to save lives during Guatemala’s brutal civil war and postwar, who established a thriving help organization fueling the rural Maya’s struggle for self-reliance.

As migrants make the dangerous trip north to the United States in record numbers, few know their personal stories as intimately as Leslie Baer Dinkel, the founder of the human development organization Local Hope Guatemala. Every year the organization brings health, education, leadership development, clean water and emergency relief programs to nearly 5,000 Mayan people living in poverty as it fuels self-reliance. A professional whose life was turned around after a trip to Guatemala in to learn Spanish during the country’s brutal civil war, Leslie became a “witness to terror” and promised impoverished villagers that she would return with help. Over the next decade she delivered more than $3 million in emergency medical aid and in the process was kidnapped twice and had funds extorted by a sitting president, among other challenges.

In her inspiring memoir, Hope Dancing: Finding Purpose and a Place to Serve Among the Maya, Leslie recalls with wit and whimsy the story of how she and a handful of like-minded friends changed the course of tens of thousands of lives in Guatemala and details her encounters with extraordinary people who guided her, including Mother Teresa, and the curious coincidences that led her to Guatemala. From identifying her first recruits to the extortion, perilous kidnappings, and other misadventures, you will become a participant in the daunting challenge of saving lives during a brutal civil war and forging hope in its aftermath. Hope Dancing offers tremendous insight into poverty, prejudice, the nature of self-determination, and especially, the transformational power of full-hearted giving.

About the Author:

Leslie Baer Dinkel is the Executive Director of Local Hope Guatemala. She spent her early career as a journalist, and later, in senior management for non-profits in Marketing and Communications. Her most recent posts included Vice President for Marketing and Communications at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, and for the Catalina Island Conservancy. She went to Guatemala in 1992 to study Spanish, and found herself in the middle of a Civil War. The experiences she had there in a refugee village convinced her that the short-dated medicines that are routinely discarded in the United States would save lives there. She went to work collecting them, and during her first year in Guatemala, delivered $3 million of life-saving medicines to those in need. The organization she founded continues today, serving nearly 5000 people each year through all of its programs. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications from California State University at Fullerton, and a Master’s Degree in Organizational Development from Azusa Pacific University.