We empower 33 poor Mayan families in San Pedro la Laguna, Guatemala, with literacy and traditional art/crafts classes which help mothers work in tourism or gain income at home. Youth are assisted to attend public school or technical training to improve their job opportunities in their home pueblo, rather than emigrate or drop out of school to work at the same menial labor of their parents - thus continuing the cycle of poverty. Re-integrating cultural traditions promotes pride in their roots.
Poor education, menial job skills, inadequate housing and lighting, cooking on a woodstove, washing clothes in the lake. This is how it has "always been done" and the tendency is to continue. But our mothers are beginning to embrace some new ideas - collective bargaining to get a better price for the products of their artistry; encouraging their children to graduate high school or technical training to get a better job. Cultivating in our community garden for more veggies in their diet.
Parents are encouraged to take classes in order to gain more food products in their monthly basket. Attending the classes, they quickly learn that it is interesting and even "social" - and to their own learning and economic benefit. By shifting the Saturday-class activities of the older youth to a work-training focus, they enjoy becoming skilled and may choose to leave traditional education for technical training -- which leads to more immediate and better-paying employment.
If moms can make money at home or in the tourist sector, their youth won't drop out of school to help them. If youth can gain well-paying employment in their own pueblo, fewer will believe that emigration is their only chance in life. Fewer students in our group may graduate from high school, but more will actually get a well-paying and satisfying job. Our pueblo will profit from more technical workers rather than sending off to the outlying cities for workers.
This project has provided additional documentation in a DOCX file (projdoc.docx).
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