Changing the World, One Child at a Time

Casa Guatemala Higher Education Fund

This month has also brought some very exciting news for our neighbours in the adjacent village of Las Brisas Del Golfete. Over the last three years, the community leaders as well as the staff at the public school have been working around the clock to have a new middle school built. The big day finally arrived for the grand opening which included a visit from the President of Guatemala, Dr Alejandro Giammattei! It was an historic event for the whole community and the students were so proud of their new school, which even included a state-of-the-art computer lab for them. It is a big step forward on the path to equality of education for rural indigenous communities like Las Brisas and we can't wait to help them make it the best school in the region with your help! 

Since they started the Basico program, which is grades seven through nine, we have allowed a few of our graduates to continue to live onsite and study in the village so that we could ensure that they would have the opportunity to continue their education. There are almost no middle schools in the rural villages so the majority of our graduates have had to find scholarships to go to school in other boarding schools. When it was announced that they would be building a brand-new school just for the Basico students, we decided to allow a larger group of students to stay on with us in addition to the high school kids who are living at our Hotel Backpackers and studying in Rio Dulce. This year, we have 11 students in our higher education program but, we are looking to expand that so that we can provide scholarships for all of our students who finish grade six with us and don’t have other options to continue their studies. 

This expansion means just that: We need more space! Our girls house is big enough to expand the amount of beds we can provide, but the boys house is already at capacity. We will be looking into how we can create an extension or annex for the older boys who will have the opportunity to continue their studies with us. This year we have Braulio and Elvin in the boys’ house and Dolores, Patricia and Yaquelin in the girls’ house. Once we have an estimate as to how much the extension will cost to build, we will put out the call to action, but for now we have started a special Higher Education Fund to help us with the costs of sponsoring the education of the 11 students we have now. Though some of them have sponsors who help to cover the expenses, not all do. We would love to have more people involved in helping us expand this program so that we can ensure that none of our kids are left behind!