Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala

In our last post, we wrote that Juan Diego’s grandfather asked Adopt-a-Village to consider his grandson for a scholarship at the Mayan Center for Education and Development…

The Mayan Center, located on a mountaintop, isolated from the distractions and pollution of population centers, is a very desirable facility at which to study for several reasons. Foremost, the school offers a two-year accelerated curriculum that puts a student on a fast track to a high school diploma, thus saving time and money to enter higher education or begin working.  That prized certificate, possessed only by a small percentage of Mayan youth, opens the doors to university advancement, professional training, or managing a small business.  Additionally, the Center’s students receive 30% more class time than what is offered at “in town” schools (classes run all day, not half days as in other schools).  Individual use of computers and Internet service are provided.  In other schools, groups of six or more students must share one computer during lessons; and, they must pay for computer time at Internet cafes in order to complete homework assignments.  The Mayan Center boasts a large library, a rarity in any level of school in rural Guatemala.  Ready access to books and computer equipment provides an enhanced opportunity to learn more and thus gain better grades that assist them in gaining entry to university or employment.

A feature important to parents is the school’s 18-day intensive study timetable that gives a student the ability to spend the remainder of the month at home working to help to help sustain the family.  To win a scholarship, Juan would have to demonstrate certain attributes—speak a Mayan language, demonstrate leadership skills, produce records of good grades, and be financially unable to pay tuition and boarding costs.  He easily demonstrated these requisites.

Juan was awarded a scholarship and lived on the rustic mountain campus with his fellow students for two years.  He studied hard and fulfilled of all his academic obligations. In addition to class time, the school requires that students take part in managing and maintaining the campus with the purpose of building leadership skills.  Work involves keeping the school and campus clean and orderly, tending the student’s vegetable garden, feeding the chickens and cleaning their coop, daily grinding the corn for tortillas and helping to prepare mails, and performing other tasks that support a well-run educational facility.

In addition to a heavy load of academic classes, Juan received intensive training in sustainable organic agriculture.  A component of the training is that students use their skills to help impoverished families in nearby villages.  During their practicum, they work alongside family members, teaching them how to prepare soil, produce green compost, transplant seedlings, use water-saving techniques, and harvest seeds for the next planting.  Juan excelled in the sustainable gardening course. He confided to the school director that his long-term goal was one day to pass along this specialized education to young people by teaching at a high school.

A few weeks ago, Juan Diego graduated as valedictorian of his class.  His long years of struggling during his childhood had given him the needed determination to succeed in winning his high school diploma.  He had clearly shown himself to be a hard worker, responsible, and resourceful.

What would be his next step?  He knew that the school administration was offering an internship to a graduate.  The internship would provide an opportunity to study and teach under senior teachers at the Mayan Center, offer advanced organic agricultural training, and gain paid work experience in nearby villages by teaching sustainable food production.   In its assessment of Juan, the administration noted not only did Juan’s skills meet a challenging set of needs, but also his background could made him ideal and very important candidate for the work he would undertake.  He could be empathetic to the extreme level of poverty the Maya suffer.  He spoke the Q’anjob’al language—the dominant Mayan language of the region.  And he had proved himself to be a dependable leader.

Several graduates would be interviewed and assessed for this desirable position.

To be continued….

 

 

 

Guatemala is one of 20 priority countries that the American government plans to help cut poverty and overwhelmingly high chronic child malnutrition rates.  On the other hand, the Peace Corps announced last week that it has canceled plans to send a contingency of new volunteers to Guatemala next month.  What a loss!  Peace Corps hands-on technical training helps rural families attain low-cost sustainable development from the ground up that can fight poverty and malnutrition.

Kristina Edmunson, a Peace Corps spokeswoman in Washington, said the move stemmed from “comprehensive safety and security concerns.”  Guatemala is one of the Central American countries that is used as a staging point by drug cartels to ship cocaine to the United States from South America.  The escalating drug and organized-crime violence in Guatemala has had much press lately. The country has one of the highest per capita murder rates in Latin America at 42 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.   (On a comparative level, the murder rate in Mexico is reported to be at 15 per 100,000).

Peace Corps technicians and others like Adopt-a-Village volunteers have the background to teach a variety of skills to empower rural people in improving their lives.  With the rate of chronic child malnutrition in Guatemala now at the 4^th highest level in the world, Adopt-a-Village has focused on teaching sustainable agriculture— soil improvement through no-cost green composting, (instead of using expensive chemical fertilizers that leach and eventually exhaust the soil), multi-cropping, correct water usage, and seed harvesting for the next planting—all viable techniques that an impoverished people can use at virtually no financial cost to help themselves out of the grip of ever-worsening hunger.

Although Peace Corps support has been cut to Guatemala, USAID is assisting this “focus country” with another style of foreign aid.  In a recent meeting at which current food security policies were discussed with a USAID official in Guatemala City, Adopt-a-Village representatives were told that USAID does not “support subsistence farming programs,” (perhaps not understanding the difference between “subsistence” and the “sustainable” methods AAV uses).  Rather, the USAID view is that some of the most promising opportunities to lessen poverty and chronic child hunger lie in non-traditional agriculture, horticulture, and coffee exports.  USAID programs have engaged thousands of small-scale coffee growers in the highlands to develop production and participate in the global market. (Some would argue that land would be better used to grow food for hunger-stricken local people).  Additionally, USAID has forged an alliance with the multinational giant, Walmart, which recently bought out Guatemala’s largest family-owned chain of grocery markets. Whereas this government/corporate agricultural partnership provides jobs for some, most of the food grown is exported to other countries in Central American and to the United States. (Google “Feed the Future” program for details on this alliance).

Crime and corporate agricultural goals aside, Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala is committed to staying and continuing to make a difference in the lives of malnourished children.  Come January, we will enter our 21^st year of service in northwestern Guatemala.  If you are the adventurous sort, we welcome you to come and volunteer with us—we are especially looking for people with organic gardening skills, carpenters, and Spanish language teachers.  (Fluency in Spanish is a Ministry of Education requirement in schools.  However, our students have been raised speaking one of the Mayan languages and need help in mastering Spanish).

Your support, as always, strengthens our resolve.  As we have stated, our foremost goal is to stem the current devastation of stunted growth and minds of Mayan children permanently impaired by chronic malnutrition.  To achieve this, our progressive school, the Mayan Center for Education, is creating a network of Mayan villages where nutritious food is being grown—but this goal needs your help in order to succeed.

In this time of giving thanks, I want to extend my most heartfelt thanks to you for your past and present commitment to the Maya of Guatemala.   Together we are helping to empower them to make important and meaningful changes in their lives.

 

Juan Diego lived in a clapboard shack on a mountainside in abject poverty but had the good fortune to be able to enjoy a magnificent view of the mighty Ixcán River in the valley far below.  Tranquil and peaceful during the dry period, the river broils up muddy and angry during the months of heavy rains.   More than one imprudent man and his mule attempting to cross it have been pulled down to a watery grave in the clutches of its powerful rapids.

The river flows from its source in the Cuchumatanes mountains, drops into the lowland jungle valley near the Mexico border and continues northward into that country.  For all its past and present acts of treason against the Maya, it nevertheless guided thousands of frenzied families as they fled on dark nights from the infamous Ixcán massacres in the early ‘80’s.   Their pathway still exists today.  Walking it, one can imagine the terror of those times—mothers running, babies in sarapes tied on their backs, fathers with toddlers on their shoulders and others grasping their hands—and the older children, barefooted, rushing, desperate not be left behind.

Those were the worst days of the genocide.  Rios Montt, an army general, had just wrested presidential power through a coup d’etat in1982.  He became known as the most violent dictator in Latin America in modern times.

Juan Diego was born a few years later, but it wasn’t until he turned seven that the effects of the civil war caught up with him.  Tragically, it was just after the Peace Accords were signed that his father made the fatal mistake of picking up an abandoned grenade.  His foolish act not only instantly ended his life, but also forever changed the course of his first son’s life.

As the eldest son of four children (Juan’s mother was then pregnant with his little brother), his days changed from childhood play to hard labor in the fields.  His solitary companion was his father’s machete.

Despite the long and lonely work, the lack of food and clothing, the mud floor he slept on under the leaky roof, Juan Diego managed to continue his schooling.  Sometimes, he dropped out for a year when the family’s supply of corn shrunk to a few kernels and it became obvious that the family wouldn’t eat if he didn’t go back to work.

At age 19, he left for the sprawl and grime of Guatemala City in the hope of finding work.  Even though he’d reached adulthood, his culture decreed that his family obligations had not ended.  As the eldest, he was expected to continue to support his mother and younger siblings.

One day, Juan’s grandfather, upon realizing that Adopt-a-Village was about to open the Mayan Center for Education and Development, approached the organization.  If he could locate his grandson (his namesake) in the city, he asked, would we interview him and give him a chance to win one of our scholarships?

To be continued…

 

There are few schools in the world that can be found on top of a remote mountain, (less one that boasts a resident jaguar as does the Adopt-a-Village Mayan Center).  I know of one distant school in the Chilean mountains, just across the border from Argentina.  It’s on the way to a ski resort, so I’m not really sure that it qualifies. Other educational boarding facilities tout their remoteness, such as another one in the Nevada desert, but really, it’s only half an hour drive to pick up a burger and a six-pack, even though the school administration frowns on the idea.

The Mayan Center for Education is situated in a pristine rainforest four hours north from a bone-jarring drive over four-wheel roads of Huehuetenango’s northernmost supply town of Santa Cruz Barillas.  Even their inhabitants don’t really know where it is and as most are non-aficionados of the wilderness, really don’t wish to know.  Nevertheless, Mayan youth who were born in isolated mountain villages call it home for two years as they live, study, and work on campus to earn their accelerated two-year diploma.  Once in hand, they can choose one of several paths—begin university studies, train in a professional facility, or even start a small business.

In addition to academic classes (where students receive 30% more class time than “city” schools), intensive training is provided in sustainable organic gardening.  Guatemala suffers from the worst level of chronic child malnutrition in Latin America and the fourth highest level in the world, according to United Nations statistics.  Every student graduates with the ability to provide his family and village the help they desperately need to produce sustainable food to stem the staggeringly high rates of child malnutrition from which they suffer.

Mateo Ordoñez, pictured here with his father, Pascual Ordoñez, and the school director, Osman Casteñada, has already introduced to his community the unique methods of soil preparation, green composting and multi-crop planting.  His father, an enthusiastic of the Center’s sustainable organic growing techniques, has volunteered to head up village committees to encourage others in these methods of food production.

 

 

Our first graduation!  What better way to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of Adopt-a-Village?

Only the country’s violent October tropical storms threatened the schedule.  Three days before the ceremony, president Alvaro Colom issued a plea for people not to travel the flooded highways—many of them destroyed by landslides, and mountainsides still collapsing with the heavy rains.  “Travel only in an emergency,” was the edict.  AAV’s director, Frances Dixon, determined that attending the first graduation of the Mayan Center for Education definitely required travel, and after 3 ½ arduous days of re-routing and skirting blocked highways, she reached the isolated mountain school, drenched and muddy.

Strains of the marimba music lifted spirits (although not the rain) and signaled that the festivities were about to begin. The school’s colors, green for the mountains and gold for the jaguar that lives nearby, festooned the hall; students proudly presented themselves in their forest-hued shirts and gold satin cummerbunds; and all proudly posed for keepsake photos garbed in a traditional cap and gown.

The ceremony climaxed with smiles and tears as parents rose and stepped forward to embrace their children.  What were they thinking?  Long-held dreams were coming true for them in those joyful moments.  Education had been denied parents in their youth when they found themselves trapped in refuge for years in Mexico during the Guatemala civil war, but in these moments they could rejoice, watching their first children graduate.

Two years of dusk-to-dawn days spent by staff and students living and studying in a remote rainforest mountain campus had paid life-size dividends.   New doors were opening—some students were continuing on to university, others were taking jobs or preparing to begin small businesses, and a top student had won a teaching internship at the Center.

Best of all, students would be sharing their knowledge in their home villages.  Indeed, they had already introduced sustainable organic gardening skills to their families and neighbors, and seven nearby communities had benefited from the students’ instruction during school service projects.  “Train a student, transform a village”—this school motto had born fruit with the first graduation!  Their education had empowered them to create a powerful surge of change in their communities—a change ensuring nutritious food for a people suffering from one of the world’s highest rates of chronic child malnutrition.

Please share these joyful times with us.  You can assure the continuation of a better future for the Maya by giving a scholarship to a deserving student for the 2012 school year.

Give Now

Thirty enthusiastic students from the Venice High School in Florida, members of the school’s Interact Club, are raising funds to further a student’s education in Guatemala. Interact, a youth service club sponsored by local Rotary clubs, undertakes an international humanitarian project each year as well as helping local charities in their fund raising efforts. This Interact Club is sponsored by the Venice/Nokomis Rotary Club.

The Interactors’ ambitious goal is to raise $2,000 to support a full scholarship for a Mayan student attending the Adopt-a-Village training center in a remote Guatemalan rainforest. The school, the only one of its kind in northwestern Guatemala, focuses on building leadership skills and providing agricultural and forestry training. Students are participating in a major bio-intensive mini-farming project that is helping local communities combat the high level of malnutrition in the region. With the country confronting a food crisis—United Nations statistics show that Guatemala has the fourth highest level of malnutrition in the world—the Interact Club will ultimately bring aid to more than just a single student through this specialized training.

The Interact students are selling Mayan handicrafts at local Venice events to raise funds for the scholarship. Theirs is a gift that will keep giving—it will benefit many communities and most importantly, through increased food production, ensure that fewer children go hungry.

They’ve never seen a book?” one of the students asked me incredulously. “How can that be possible?”

I was giving a presentation to a group of Interact students in Venice, Florida. I had explained that believe it or not, some of our high school students at the Adopt-a-Village Mayan Center had gone through primary and middle school without ever having read a book. How did they learn? Copy down in their notebooks what the teacher wrote on the blackboard. Needless to say, such impoverished education brings acute remedial problems once students begin studies at our school. But it is the reality and one we have to deal with and work to resolve.

I explained to the Florida high school students some of the differences between their school and the Mayan Center school—like our lack of educational supplies and materials, no heating or air conditioning in the school or dormitory cabins, no proper kitchen, no running water, no toilets and only cold showers. My audience continued to be attentive but clearly remained incredulous.

When I described how our Mayan kids are responsible for a daily work program requiring them to be up at 5:00 a.m. to work on a variety of jobs, I received some puzzled looks. I explained how students must make, from scratch, 300 corn tortillas on an open pit fire every morning. The group grew quieter still. (From scratch requires carrying a big pot of cooked corn on a student’s head up the mountainside to the motorized grinder, grinding the corn into masa (dough) and then hiking back to the small rustic kitchen where the dough is expertly hand-formed to the size and shape of a cue ball, then flattened in a press, and cooked on a comal (a flat iron pan). During the tortilla ritual, other students cook a breakfast of porridge or eggs in the tiny kitchen on a wood stove by candlelight. Work duty is serious, but not without humor. Laughter abounds, even at the early hour.

Whereas each student receives a full scholarship that includes board and lodging, he/she must participate in maintaining and managing the campus based on the organization’s self-help philosophy and guidelines. A student council schedules the rotation of daily duties—cleaning the goat stables and collecting the precious manure for their school garden; tending the chickens, including learning how to apply parasite medicine and inject their vaccinations; and maintaining and cleaning the showers, latrines, and dormitory cabins. It’s been a lot of years since my son was in high school, but I can tell you that he definitely didn’t have to hit the bricks at 5:00 a.m. for work duty just to get some breakfast! This program is unique to our school. It was designed so that students can better understand the value of work and the value of their scholarship.

The remote rain forest mountain campus site has many distinctive and unique features. The area was chosen to give students the benefit of a tranquil and inspirational environment for their studies. The school community is self-contained with its own housing, food production, water supply, solar power, and a satellite system that allows the outside world to enter, when desired. In other words, it is self-sustainable.

We offer 30% more class time than traditional schools. Small eight-person interactive tutorial groups are the norm instead of the overcrowded 60-student classrooms in town where students endlessly copy their lessons written on the blackboard. At this time of writing we provide one computer for two students, until we are able to secure additional funding to provide a computer for each student. In other schools, the average is one computer to six students.

The Center’s 18-day study schedule provides students with concentrated uninterrupted study and after, the opportunity to spend the rest of the month in their villages helping their parents earn enough to keep the family fed.

And whereas many students entered our school without ever knowing a book, they do now. Through the efforts of two stalwart Adopt-a-Village supporters, Fran and Sue Lenski, their families, friends and others, the school has an impressive starter library with textbooks, reference books, encyclopedias, manuals, and a good selection of literature by well known Latin authors. I would venture to say that this small library is second to none of any other school in the department of Huehuetenango.

I am happy to say that the Venice Interact students are looking forward to communicating with our Mayan students. It will be a great learning opportunity for both groups and one that will lead to new international friendships.