By Beatriz Gandara | Project Leader
CONTEXT OF THE AREA IN WHICH THIS GIRLS LIVE
Retalhuleu is located in the southwest of Guatemala, most of its inhabitants are engaged in agricultural activities especially in rural areas where the 28 families benefited by the Scholarship Project are located. For FUNDAP through the scholarships it is a challenge to be able to help the young girls, since many of them are demotivated due to:
With these socio-cultural problems, the project aims to ensure that the greatest number of girls complete the grade satisfactorily, and at the same time that the parents are protagonists for the good performance of the students in their studies.
At the same time, the scholarship project is committed to families and students to complete their high school education, it is important to mention that most of the girls would not continue their studies due to the economic factor, which is why during the selection of the students to the scholarship it was possible that several of them enrolled in the educational centers and in this way continue their education.
The main challenge of the project, is to ensure that young women do not leave the school system, as many of them by mid-term and year-end term holidays, are inserted into the workforce to contribute to family expenses, some of them travel to Tapachula Mexico and sometimes they no longer intend to continue their studies. However, the project has already identified communities where there is greater mobilization of students and monitoring will be/is maintained in schools to reduce this risk.
PERFORMED ACTIONS
Selection and awareness
During the first 2 months of the school year, surveys were conducted in 6 communities in the department of Retalhuleu, in order to determine school dropout rates, not-promoted and promoted girls who finished sixth grade in 2017 in the schools of the community, this was used as a basis for the selection of the educational centers so that the project can carry out its actions for the benefit of the girls which is that they continue high school education and do not drop-out from school.
At the end of the community survey, 6 communities were selected, where drop-out rates, extreme poverty and lack of support from parents for their daughters' education are evident, the selected communities are:
RETALHULEU
TOTAL: 28
By having selected the communities and the possible candidates for the scholarship, sensitization meetings were held in each community with the objective of parent awareness of the importance of the education from women. Associated to this action, those in charge of the girls were told of their commitment and responsibilities within the project, likewise, the girls were committed to attend school regularly and maintain acceptable academic performance.
Baseline and home visits
At the moment of having the official list of candidates to apply for a scholarship, we proceeded to fill out the baseline of each girl, this consisted of conducting a socioeconomic study of each family, to determine their needs for financial support and to observe the parents with the interest that their daughters continue studying, as well as, to verify the vulnerability of the girl and family, 30 home visits were made to validate the following:
The 28 young women who are currently receiving scholarships are motivated and eager to continue studying, the support of the scholarship has been an incentive for each of them, especially because they know that this benefit will be for 3 years, which gives them security to finish their basic studies and continue in the following levels of education.
Each of the girls has a file where the accompaniment provided throughout the scholarship is recorded.
Monitoring of educational centers
During these months of intervention of the project, 2 monitoring sessions were carried out at each educational center, in order to obtain information from the directors and teachers in relation to the attendance, academic performance and behavior of each one of the scholars. With this activity, situations that obstruct the good progress of the students are detected, for which individualized and collective counseling has been carried out with the beneficiaries; and at the same time some homes have been visited to treat some family problems.
At the end of February the young women are studying, they are glad to be part of the project. Likewise, it is important to mention that parents are expecting for their daughters to attend the school, every day.
Thank you very much to all Donors who have contributed to our cause, helping these 28 girls strengthen the future of Guatemala. We will keep you informed of their activities in the coming weeks, as we hope to achieve our goal of arriving to 50 girls that need our support; support that we can accomplish with donations in the total amount of $21,000.
By Beatriz Gandara | Project Leader
By Beatriz Gandara | Project Leader
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