Education Guatemala Project #44762

Education for 400 villagers of Tzununa

by Asociacion Comunitaria para el Desarrollo Educativo y Cultural de Tzununa

Project Report | Feb 28, 2022
Jobs with higher qualifications

By Maria Castells Arrosa | Project Leader

Lunch for 200 people with food the Students made

December was a month of Graduation for all the students to whom we gave scholarships to study crochet, cooking (one year long), embroidery, painting and music.

The Students of Cooking clases created a lunch at the school (Cecap) with all the food they learned to make and we could all go and try. More than 100 people attended. Then a few weeks later was Graduation day with the support of Cecap and Amigos de Santa Cruz an NGO in the nearby village that has the school.

It was a very emotional day as the students were proud of their achievements and happy to start to look for better jobs. Now that they have the certifications they can apply and qualify for jobs that are better payed and expand their knowledge with more practice.

The beginning of the year was a lot of planning for 2022 and make all the things that we could not do before become possible. This implies a lot of administrative work in researching better prices to make drums and order them. Board meeting to define how big and how much money to spent on the Playground and search for different options. Find new volunteers to do clases this year. A new guitar and piano teacher started giving clases once a week. Children don´t have the opportunity to learn to plan an instrument other than at the Community Center in Tzununá as schools don´t provide this.

Jewelry making started again. This is an afternoon every week and it is amazing to see how with the same supplies children express their creativity in different ways. The goal is to develop the patience, finish the project that they decided to do and don´t do it for them. We are present to help but promote that girls and boys do their own project.

This goes along some other educational projects that happen at the Community Center aimed at empowering and teaching about do it your self. In school too many hours are spent copying books. So we try to make a difference. Children have lots of fun creating jewelry and feel really happy with the results!

Another part of January was spent doing publicity for the scholarships for 2022 and opening inscriptions. We observed that part of the lessons learned from 2021 is spent more time in giving talks about the advantages of keep studies. As many young people choose to work in non qualified jobs instead of applying for the scholarships and open new opportunities. We hope that this will result in more inscriptions and empowering people to get qualifications that will allow them to have jobs better payed and sustain their families!

Graduation Students Cooking class (year long)

Proud Students of Cooking clases

Graduation from Embroidery Clases

Jewelry making

Happy leaving the Community Center after art

Thank you note for donors of 2021!!

Permalink

Nov 1, 2021
Drums and Music for Children

By Maria Castells | Project Leader

Embroidery clases, the final products are amazing!

The Community Center in Tzununá is growing with the increased support we are having. Clases and activities continued during this pass three months since last report. We love to see children, young people and women showing up for their trainings and improving their skills. The opportunities for training are not many in our small village so this opens doors for future jobs.

We had great support from new volunteers to start a drum and motivation clases once a week to promote consistency with children. This music clases started by a local project that provided one volunteer (Miel) that donated time and many new drums. A guitar teacher approached us to teach guitar clases with children. This was asked by many boys that want to learn guitar. Hope that girls join soon!! The Music Academy is growing and this is so much needed in this community were children and young people cannot pay for music clases. New talents appear and we can see future musicians being supported. The children are so happy to be able to engage in music clases and discover that if they come and practice their abilities increase.

The students that are with scholarships in Culinary clases finished the training and now are ready for the last part of this year: internships in a restaurant or hotel for one month! This training is so important as when they finish next December they will be ready to find jobs. This empowers woman and men and gives them a life time skill to have a job and sustain themselves and their families.

Our donors increased and we had a great Little by Little week with lots of new donors. This will allow us to continue our programs and add more activities. Thank you all the new donors. We are very pleased to report that besides the difficult times we managed to keep going and provide many opportunities for Education and Art!

Planing to finally build our playground for the children in the coming months and we opened up the inscriptions for 2022 scholarships with new courses added to the offerings!

The children, young people and woman are grateful for the donors that help us open up doors, expand and grow!!

Children bring sticks, we provide papers for kites

Lucas is asking us to provide guitar clases

Drums and fun

Erica new supporter engaging with children

Another day of drum fun

Permalink

Jul 6, 2021
Empowering woman to create income

By Josefina Tepaz and Maria Castells-Arrosa | Librarian and Project Coordinator

Crochet Clases at Community Center

The woman, men, young men and children of our Tzununá village thank you for your continuous support to Chi Tz´Unun Choy, the Community Center in Tzununá!!!

The highlights of this three months are the clases that people are attending. Why they are so important? Opportunities to get trained in things that then become job opportunities are not easy to find for woman in our town. So the scholarships provided to woman and men are doors that we open to find jobs in the future.

Many of the project beneficiaries have expressed how happy they are to learn new skills that will allow them to bring more income to their families.

The amazing fact that some of this classes can happen in our premises have allowed more woman to attend as the Community Center is walking distance from their homes. We are amazed by the results and the products that this woman are making! We have teachers that are coming to teach embroidery and crochet. The woman finished level 1 and Level 2 just started two weeks ago. And we have a big group of woman that study crochet.

A small group of woman did a specialized cooking class you can see pictures of the last day when they shared with the community the food they learned to do. This allows woman that already know how to cook to learn new skills this opens job opportunities also by diversifying the offer. We have a group of men and woman attending a year round cooking class they will allow them to find jobs in hotels, restaurants or create their own restaurant or café. We also have men studying to be carpenters, many men in the community work in building sites so learning new skills will allow them to access better jobs and salaries.

The clases are provided by Cecap from Amigos de Santa Cruz, we provide the scholarships.

At the Library the art clases have continued and we just closed a second training! We have two new volunteers teaching music, and reinforcing reading and empowering young girls and boys to become leaders in their communities.

We were very lucky this passed month that a dear friend of the Community Center and resident in our village collected funds for his birthday as donations to the project. And another resident started to fundraise to built a playground for the children. This is very important as when the mothers come receive the trainings (crochet and embroidery) the children would have a place to play outside. We hope to built this new playground very soon!

People that are receiving scholarships give back to the Community by doing something as volunteers once a month. There was a trash cleaning day and a day of planting trees!

We thank so much our monthly donors that have allowed us to plan with the security that we can provide education, art and culture in Tzununá!!!

We thank so much you're continuous support and generous donations as without this we would not be able to empower the women of our Community!!

Closing of specialized cooking clases

Students of specialized cooking clases

Empowering Children

Closing of second level of Art Classes

Attachments:

7 Attachments

Permalink

1 2 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.