In a Yarmouth church on a rainy Saturday this September, a celebration reflected on 25 years of transformative work that took place over 2,300 miles away.

The nonprofit Safe Passage, or “Camino Seguro,” founded in 2000 by a Yarmouth-born Mainer, is marking a quarter century of breaking the cycle of poverty in Guatemala City through education and community development. Today, it serves 600 children annually from families living in severe poverty scavenging in Guatemala City’s dump, the largest landfill in Central America.

Residents of Yarmouth, Cumberland and Falmouth that gathered at First Parish Church on Sept. 18 all played a role supporting this work over the years.

“Mainers are incredibly generous and kind and community-centered. And this was a community that was far, but not so far because so many folks from Maine came in those first few years and became a part of it,” said Safe Passage Executive Director Erin Mooney.

The connection to Maine begins with the nonprofit’s origin. Hanley Denning, a Greely High School alum of 1988 who later attended Bowdoin College, started Safe Passage after visiting the dump in 1999 when volunteering in Guatemala to improve her Spanish. Upon returning to the United States, she sold her computer and car and was soon back in Guatemala City to open the doors of Safe Passage.

Hearing Denning speak passionately about the nonprofit’s mission, in the following years high school groups, colleges, churches and rotary clubs across Midcoast Maine became involved in Safe Passage. Mainers threw fundraisers, sent monetary donations — $15.9 million from over 6,000 Maine donors since 2000 — and went on volunteer trips to the site in Guatemala, with over 80 trips coming from Maine over the years.

“The fact that Hanley was from Maine, was a Bowdoin grad and went to Greely, people wanted to wrap around her. She was extremely charismatic and compelling,” said Rachel Meyn Ugarte, director of development for Safe Passage.

Becky Pride, a since-retired English teacher at Yarmouth Public Schools, visited Safe Passage in 2004 with her husband Doug Pride, a retired Greely High School math teacher. Going on the trip after connecting with Denning, Becky Pride described the experience as “life changing.”

“It was just remarkable what we saw. Not just what she was doing for the kids, but the hope and the joy that the kids had being part of that program,” said Doug Pride, who lives in Falmouth.

The couple went on to be the teacher sponsors for student clubs at both Greely and Yarmouth High School that fundraised for Safe Passage, organized a road race fundraiser that took place for over 15 years in Cumberland, and continues to donate monthly to the nonprofit.

As the support for Safe Passage was taking off, its passionate founder was suddenly gone. Denning died in 2007 in a car accident in Guatemala at 36 years old.

“That mission that we all have now — Hanley started it, but that’s a mission that she passed to all of us,” said Safe Passage Associate Director Pablo Callejas.

Finding its footing again and evolving as a more sustainable organization, the work of Safe Passage continued and eventually expanded. While the organization started as a “triage” by rapidly addressing poverty by distributing baskets of food and clothes to families living around the dump, it now has an accredited school, a health clinic and social services for students and their families.

“Our early goals were feeding kids and ending malnutrition. And now we have students who are graduating to become doctors and studying to become lawyers,” said Mooney.

The school’s curriculum has also advanced to better suit the social needs of the students, who still face severe poverty and discrimination. Now integrating Mayan language and culture, as many students have immigrated internally from more rural areas of Guatemala, the curriculum also is designed to empower students as social leaders, said Callejas.

“They’re going to make a better world. Not only here in the community, but in the whole country,” he said.

As the organization has grown and developed, the connection to Maine has also changed. Its physical office in Maine closed last year, with three American staff members now working remotely. Unlike the American volunteers that largely ran Safe Passage in its early days, 115 of the 177 staff members in Guatemala are now certified professionals native to the country. The organization plans to have a graduate of its school lead the program within the next decade, said Mooney.

As Safe Passage becomes Guatemalan-led to best serve and inspire its students, the organization still wants Mainers to remain connected to the work.

“It’s a shift. We don’t need folks to come here and lead the work anymore, but we do need folks to come here and see it and feel it and remain involved,” said Mooney.

Over two decades later, thousands of people across Maine still remember their early grassroots involvement in the organization and are astonished at what Safe Passage has since become.

“We were there at the inception. They’ve done so much in 25 years, it’s absolutely astounding,”  said Becky Pride. “They have such vision for the future.”