Effective November 29, 2016, USPS suspended most mail services to Guatemala. This is the third shutdown of mail services in Guatemala this year. The current suspension is at the request of the postal operator in Guatemala, as a result of staffing and logistical difficulties, and ongoing and deferred negotiations between the Guatemalan government and the mailing service agency.
For the latest updates from USPS, visit https://about.usps.com/news/
Until services to Guatemala resume, you will be unable to mail letters normally sent by international airmail or by using a global forever stamp. Any mail recently deposited with USPS or other acceptance locations for delivery to Guatemala may be intercepted and returned to the sender.
In an effort to protect our sponsors' privacy, we supply sponsors with mailing labels that list Unbound as the sender. So letters that were sent to Guatemala using these labels would be returned to us. We will hold any letters returned to our Kansas City office until mail service to Guatemala resumes.
In the meantime, we encourage sponsors to communicate with their sponsored friends in Guatemala using the eLetter feature available on our website. You can attach one photo per eLetter and can send up to six eLetters in a 12-month period. Please visit unbound.org/eLetter to learn more.
Fortunately, the disruption in mail service will not affect the delivery of letters from sponsored children and elders to their sponsors. Unbound uses a private delivery service for communications from our office in Guatemala to our headquarters in Kansas City. Once sponsored friends' letters arrive at our headquarters, we forward them to sponsors.
We will continue to monitor the suspension of mail services to Guatemala and will contact you again once we learn that services have resumed. If you have questions, please feel free to call us at (800) 875-6564 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Central time or reply to this email.
Sincerely,
Sponsor Services
