Help School fight Climate Change w/ Green Building

This summer at Long Way Home has been a growing experience for all. Our middle school students have been working with a local Peace Corps volunteer to start a seed bank at the school; the construction crew is expanding to a new project for financial sustainability; the new curriculum was presented to the Guatemalan National Curriculum board, and more!

In July, Jesse, one of the Peace Corps volunteers in Comalapa, started a project with our middle school students to begin a garden specifically to create a seed bank. We will be one of 2-3 pilot projects in the community that will hopefully expand with great success. This two-terrace garden will grow native plants that are simple to harvest seeds from and grow food. They started with building an efficient compost pile. The next assignment was preparing the garden beds, then testing the soil. We are now waiting for the seeds so that we can plant them! Students are learning the hands-on benefit of growing your own food and the sustainability of collecting your own seeds to continue the process for years. Seeds are a large expense in agriculture in Guatemala and there are very few practices which allow for the people to continue to grow the same crops without buying new seeds each season. We are very excited to be part of the pilot program in Comalapa.

This year Técnico Chixot Construction crew has taken on a project that is proving the financial sustainability model for the school. The majority of our construction crew are now working to build a private home and large tire retaining walls around the property in one of the villages of Comalapa. We were also able to employ 25 more Comalapans in the construction crew. This project is enabling us to continue employing our full crew while also providing about 80% of the operational funds LWH needs to run the school. This is one of the first official construction projects that is proving the school model of financial sustainability, which we look forward to growing to support 100% of operations for Centro Educativo Técnico Chixot. Please keep us in mind if you would like to build sustainably while supporting a great cause!

The Comalapan team of Técnico Chixot are building the school as a site of Democratic Education. In doing so, it supports the creation of a democratic society, in part, through an educational process where teaching and learning is participatory, empowering, and emancipatory. Democratic Education provides pathways for individuals to think critically, work cooperatively, and assume the roles necessary to build a socially just and sustainable world. Because of this, Democratic Education can be a formidable force of change for all those involved and the places in which they live. In a Democratic Education setting, students, teachers, and community members can be transformed into heroes who can courageously take their place in the world as responsible citizens and creative entrepreneurs working for social change.

Our hardworking teachers presented this new curriculum that they have been developing to the Guatemalan National Curriculum (CNB) board this last month. The board was very interested in all the work they have accomplished so far. They asked our team for their analysis of the national curriculum, and hope to be able to include that in their revisions coming up in the next year. They were very impressed with all that our teachers had done and told them to keep moving forward con gusto!

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We would love to introduce you to Estefanie, one of our inspiring 8th graders. She has been in school with us since the beginning, over 5 years! Now two of her four siblings also go to CETC (Centro Educativo Tecnico Chixot) and she hopes her youngest siblings will be able to join when they are old enough as well. At just 12 years old, she is a volunteer fire fighter and when she grows up she wants to be a doctor. Her favorite subject is English and she loves the new classroom that she is in this year. Last year, Estefanie was selected to star in a Belgium TV children's show, Goed Gezien, that teaches kids about development projects all over the world. Watch Estefanie in Goed Gezien!

Estefanie is one of our unique heroic students that is inspired by the school and the education she is getting. It is our hope that is she continues all the way through to high school graduation where she will be in a new generation of Hero leaders in her community. The CETC curriculum being built by our middle school teachers is creating the opportunities for each student to become a Hero! Learn more about the curriculum development here 

We would like to give you this opportunity to help financialy sustain one of our Heroes with a monthly gift and become a LWH Hero Builder! We have worked out a model that educates, employs teaching staff, and supplies each student with what they need for just $40 per student per month! This, along with a variety of other sources, is how our school model maintains one of it's most crucial pieces, to be financially sustainable.

Now that CETC is officially inaugurated into the community and construction of critical campus buildings are finished, it is time to truly focus on how the school itself can be financially sustainable. It would not be possible to have made it here without your support! Yet it is time to make sure this school thrives for years and empowers the community to take it on themselves. Our plan continues to evolve but our hero school will maintain itself as a center for education in many aspects from green building to permaculture to sustainability to NGO practices to health and more! Along with hosting workshops and educational courses, our construction team will continue building. There is still plenty more to be done at the school and now we are beginning to offer our services to the community and the world!

Our good friends at Natural Building Collective in South Africa have just finished holding their first month-long sustainable building course using natural materials and tires, in collaboration with us at Long Way Home! They are building a passive solar, earth sheltered building out of tires, cob, compressed earth bricks, ecobricks and glass bottles at the Delft Early Childhood Development (ECD) centre. We look forward to hosting the next sustainable building academy here in Comalapa in the next year! 

We are also extremely proud to be the WINNER of the Energy Globe Awards Guatemala 2017!! We were awarded best project in Guatemala for our use of sustainable design techniques, 400+ tons of garbage in construction and innovation in helping the community of Comalapa.

Un montón de agradecimiento por ustedes y su apoyo! As always we are extremely grateful for your support and thank you for your interest in our work. We enjoy the opportunity to share our stories with you, the people that make them possible!

Thank you, Gracias y Matiox ~