Education Guatemala Project #14175

Magical Classroom

by Lets Be Ready

Project Report | Nov 12, 2020
The Arcadio studies

By Sofia Garcia | Operations Manager

This is an opportunity to share with you the achievements and happiness felt by our Community Coordinator from Chiantla, Huehuetenango, Guatemala.

He is called Arcadio and is 38 years of age. The community where he lives is very rural and it is in one of the colder regions of the country. Recently, Arcadio achieved his university qualification for teaching at middle school level.

Arcadio has been part of our Aula Mágica since 2017, and has been responsible for coordinating and ensuring that everything runs efficiently in the Huehuetenango region.

Arcadio has shared with us his journey, which has brought him to where he is now:

‘When I was 25 years old, I returned to my studies as I had only previously studied until the third grade at primary school. I completed my primary school education through receiving distance-learning classes via the radio. I then continued my education and studied to teach at primary school level. In 2014, I went to university to study to enable me to teach at middle school level.

To study at university was an considerable struggle owing to my lack of the necessary financial resources. I had to leave my community at 5:30 in the morning and had to walk forty-five minutes in order to catch the bus and to arrive at university at 7:45am. Classes started at 8am. I only studied on Saturdays so classes finished at 6pm and I would be home at 9pm.

I want to express my appreciation to all the people who supported me throughout my studies and who made this possible. All of the effort and perseverance that I have put in has been worth it and has certainly resulted in success.

My message to all children and youths is that they continue their studies whatever their age. Education is very important, and if we study, we can change our lives for the better and become better people. If we set our own objectives and goals, we can achieve these with effort and perseverance. Anything is possible and we must dream big! We all have the ability to achieve what we want as long as we apply ourselves and fight to achieve it!

Many thanks in particular to Fred, Mrs Lili, Aula Mágica and to my family for all your support, generosity and faith in me.

Arcadio,

We are all extremely proud of Arcadio and delighted that he is part of the Aula Mágica team.

Permalink

Oct 9, 2020
Visiting our children!

By Sofia Garcia | Operations Manager

Dear friends,

Over the past seven months, everyone at Aula Mágica, including each of our 27 Facilitators, has been working from home. During this challenging period however, the Facilitators have been using their time profitably. They have created new teaching materials and studied a great amount of material including children’s books and audio resources that will form part of our educational programme. This has been a valuable opportunity for our Facilitators to strengthen their knowledge and teaching skills, which will definitely benefit our children once we return to provide formal classroom based education to our children.

A number of weeks ago, we assessed the situation in each of the communities where we work, and fortunately, we were able to confirm that some of the communities were not affected by Covid-19. In these communities we decided to resume our education provision, taking into account the fact that Facilitators live within the same community, and ensuring that all the necessary hygiene precautions were in place: using masks, washing hands and using sanitising hand gel. The resumption of our work involved one-to-one teaching, with the Facilitators visiting each child and providing them with a lesson of at least one hour.

Unfortunately, over a period of more than seven months, our children had not been able to receive any education. The communities where we work are very rural and remote and therefore do not have access to the Internet, meaning that they are not able to study online.

Our Facilitators have now been visiting our students for five weeks, and we have received considerable support from their parents who are appreciative that their children can receive their classes. Equally, our children are delighted to be studying once again with their teacher. All of us at Aula Mágica are very happy that we can support our children during these turbulent and challenging times.

Our commitment to support our children is as strong as ever, and the plan is for our Facilitators to visit each of our children until the 18^th December, 2020. This will allow us to catch up on some of the time that we have lost with our children. We know that the most important things are our children and their education.

In the communities where we work and where there have unfortunately been cases of Covid-19, our Facilitators continue working from home, creating new teaching materials and generally preparing themselves for when they will be able to provide classes to our children.

The schools in Guatemala have remained closed since March, and the Government has said that in-person classes have finished for 2020 so children will not be returning to school.

We will keep you up to date with how things progress regarding our new approach to education brought on by Covid-19.

We hope that you are keeping very well and we send you our best wishes!

Aula Mágica Guatemala

Permalink

Aug 31, 2020
Gophilanthropic and Aula Magica

By Sofia Garcia | Operations Manager

‹ 1 ... 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 ... 30 ›

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.