Magical Classroom

Dear Friends of Magical Classroom Guatemala,

This year, 2021, continues to pose a number of significant challenges to the team at Magical Classroom. Covid-19 unsurprisingly remains a big part of our lives, and therefore the challenges that we face in order to carry out our daily educational activities at Magical Classroom. In order to ensure the safety and health of our communities, we are using a hybrid form of education, as well as respecting the national traffic light Covid safety system and the decisions made by the local authorities.

Despite the challenges, our programme has continued this year, and we have worked with our children for a total of ten weeks. In certain communities, small groups of children have been allowed to meet in the schools and this has certainly made life easier. However, in other communities, schools have remained closed for the safety of their community. When this is the case, our Facilitators have visited each home of our children whilst respecting all of the necessary precautions - using a face mask, washing hands, and taking their temperature. A significant advantage is that our Coordinators live within their communities and this provides the parents with valuable reassurance.

We are always looking at ways to allow us to continue our educational activities, and we feel that this is very important since the children who are already most affected, and will suffer the most from not receiving an education, will be our children. Unlike in other parts of the world, studying via a digital platform is unfortunately not feasible for our communities due to the poverty that they encounter. In the rural communities where we work, there is lighted access to electricity, often no Internet signal and very limited reception for mobile telephones.

I’m pleased to say that this year we have a total of 32 Magical Classrooms in place, which is 10 more than last year. However, there is no stopping there! We have plans to expand this number by working with a lot more communities that need access to vital pre-school education. Soon I will be sharing more details about the communities that we are looking to include in our program.

As always, we send you all of our very best of wishes and hope you and your loved ones are safe and well. Until our next update!

Warm regards,

Magical Classroom Guatemala

Appreciated Friends,

This past year we have made some videos of the work we do and how we were able to work with our children despite the impacts of Covid 19.

Many thanks to all of the organizations, board of directors, facilitators, coordinators, friends and followers of our program for always supporting us!

Aula Mágica Guatemala, a new way of learning. 

Our best wishes to all of you

Magical Classroom is the result of believing that great achievements are made with motivation, vision and a lot of passion

We share in these links our videos of the activities of the year 2020:

Links:

• Aula Magica, Our work, video in English 2020
• Aula Magica, Our work, video in Spanish 2020

Dear friends,

The year 2020 was full of changes and many challenges to overcome.

We are grateful to all those who supported us this year 2020; without the help of different social organizations that believe in our work, it would not have been possible to accomplish our mission! We are so grateful to you all!

We also want to thank our facilitators and coordinators for working with all of our kids. We appreciate you all!

In short, Magical Classroom is the result of believing that great achievements are made with motivation, vision and a lot of passion

Aula Mágica Guatemala, a new way of learning. 

We present to you our accomplishments from 2020!

Links:

• Aula Magica, our report for 2020

Dear Friends,

Warm regards,

We are pleased to share with you this video that we produced about our program. We are very appreciative and delighted to be working in rural Guatemalan communities that have a great need for pre-school education.

Thanks to everyone for their support and their trust in us!

With hope and excitement, we continue forwards with our program!

We are extremely grateful for the vital support that you have provided us in 2020.

We wish everyone all the success for the new year of 2021!

 https://www.dropbox.com/s/wxag7zitmx4a2vd/Aula%20M%C3%A1gica%20V1%20English.mp4?dl=0

We are very committed to continue our work, and very hopeful that we’ll be able to continue our work.

Aula Mágica Guatemala / Magical Classroom

Links:

• Dear Friends, Video about our program Aula Magica Guatemala

We hope this letter finds you and your family well and secure. This has been a trying year for all of us in the U.S. and around the world. We are so fortunate to have the resources to protect ourselves and our loved ones.

In 2020, life has changed dramatically for the people of Guatemala, where resources are scarce. With the COVID-19 pandemic, loss of income for day laborers, and climate change resulting in two hurricanes, the marginalized communities we serve have been hard hit.

The needs and challenges are greater than ever.

 As you might know, classrooms were closed across Guatemala early in March. However, we are extremely proud that our Guatemalan staff of teachers, coordinators, and directors have successfully responded by adapting their program to home visitation, which is providing students and their parents with activities in which students can continue their academic progress, and also receive their Mathile nutritional supplements. This has been so beneficial, that we will continue to use these homework activities after we resume our regular program, to augment the classroom learning. We see the added bonus in providing resources that easily involve parents in their children's learning.

In addition, food has been distributed to those families most in need. All of the staff is receiving their entire salary for the year.

Our mission of providing pre-school education through employing local women as teachers is on track, despite the epidemic. We will be testing the children academically and taking measures of height, weight, and levels of anemia to follow their wellness. 

The plan for 2021 is to continue serving our 52 established communities with an expansion of 10 or more in Quiche.  There is a strong possibility that classrooms can resume in February. or the Spring. So as you can see, we enter 2021 a stronger and more dynamic organization.

How honored and grateful we are for your continued support! Because of you, we can continue this important work, and expand our program to reach more children and families in rural areas of Guatemala. You are helping us to positively impact the lives and futures of many, and for this we are so thankful to you. 

Thank you so much for your generosity on Giving Tuesday, from all of us at Aula Mágica. May you stay safe and healthy, and enjoy the holidays with loved ones!