This project focuses on Maya youth ages 12 -18. These kids live without electricity, but are learning how to use a computer at our secondary school. This project offers digital literacy classes to the entire student and teacher population. In an area with the highest poverty rate and likely the highest illiteracy rate, vocational training has the opportunity to change student outcomes. Only 5% of students complete HS in rural Alta Verapaz. We plan to break that cycle. Let's start with a laptop!
Xch'ool Ixim ("Heart of Corn") a Q'eqchi' Maya led Association, is dedicated to serving the rural regions of the department of Alta Verapaz (AV), in north central Guatemala. In AV, 93% of the population are Mayans, of whom 99.97% are Q'eqchi'. AV is the 2nd largest department, and it has the highest poverty rate in the country. The government does not support secondary education in this region. There is one primary school per pueblo with limited resources. Access to education is the problem.
In 2010, Xch'ool Ixim founded the only secondary school in the region, the "Instituto Maya Comunitario K'amolb'e (IMaCK)." Its mission is to foster bilingual (Q'eqchi'- Spanish) education in the most remote areas and indigenous villages of AV and to make education accessible to anyone who wants it. In 2023, we opened our 1st computer lab and made laptops available to all of the students and teachers. Integrating computer technology classes provides incentives to graduate and provides job skills.
Since the end of the 2023 school-year, we have already realized a 45% increase in student enrollment; due in large part to the initiation of the computer lab! IMaCK is focused on adding vocational and technology training classes to support student graduates who are seeking jobs, or university education. We are providing access to education and pathways for entrepreneurship. We are developing future community leaders who can shape their own futures and break the cycle of irregular migration.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
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