Education Guatemala Project #2402

Help School fight Climate Change w/ Green Building

by Long Way Home, Inc.

Help School fight Climate Change w/ Green Building

Project Report | Mar 6, 2018
Tecnico Chixot starts with community projects

By Thomas Hartig | Outreach & Communications

Heydi Bal, Teacher Tecnico Chixot

First year of high school has begun

This year we opened the first high school grade at Técnico Chixot! Our school, Centro Educativo Técnico Chixot has been developing a curriculum based on democracy and self-sufficiency. The democratic education model presents a dynamic, interdisciplinary curriculum that guides student-driven, community-based projects that address genuine community needs. Our middle and high school students will now begin planning and implementing a variety of community infrastructure projects that they will carry out in the nearby village of Xiquin Sanaii, Comalapa.

Just last week we watched proudly as our middle and high school students presented their projects to the entire community of Xiquin Sanaii. This will be the beginning of beautiful new chapter for Long Way Home and Técnico Chixot! The village is about 10km outside the center of Comalapa in the mountains and the residents face infrastructure issues that are common in rural areas of Guatemala. Each grade presented their project as a solution after describing the problem that it addresses. For example, respiratory illnesses and deforestation are large problems that affect many communities in Guatemala. 7th graders at Tecnico Chixot will build smoke-efficient stove for a family that will help to solve these issues one family at a time. Many indigenous people in rural areas face problems like no access to water, bad cooking conditions and/or worse sanitation situation. All of these problems reduce health and overall well-being of indigenous families, especially women and children. Our students of Técnico Chixot will begin to survey all the families in the village to chose who is most at need for each project that the students will then implement for the final project of the year. The green building projects include the construction of a smoke efficient stove, a water tank, latrine and a retaining wall which our students then will carry out in the near future under the technical guidance of our experts and teachers.

February Workshops at Long Way Home

Sharing knowledge empowers people to become self-sufficient. Feburary was the month of workshops at Long Way Home and we partnered with different organizations and people to learn from each other. We built successfully a cob oven for a local family and their pizza business. Cob ovens are a sustainable, affordable, and easy way to build an oven for many uses. The following weekend we held a medicinal plants workshop in collaboration with a local women of Comalapa. She showed us the secrets and uses of many local plants and their holistic uses in everyday lifes. The last week featured a permaculture workshop with Instituto MesoAmericano de Permacultura (IMAP). This introduction course to permaculture was all about ethics and principles of natural systems, permaculture design and Mayan cosmology. Our most successful workshop was the beginning of a beautiful partnership with IMAP and we had 20 participants from all over Guatemala including other local organizations. We look forward to hosting more workshops to enhance our education center and we invite you to join us next time!

Green Building Academy July 2018

We are excited to announce the inaugural year Green Building Academy with a four-week summer sessions that will give participants a solid background and hands-on experience in green, sustainable construction practices. Academy graduates will emerge as ethical and creative change agents, conscious and culturally competent global citizens, and informed leaders doing their part to create a more sustainable world. A local family with limited economic resources will be involved in construction and will receive the completed home at the end of the Academy. We hope to make the Academy accessible to people from Guatemala and Latin America with a scholarship program as well. Help us spread the word!

Inaugral session: July 1 - July 30, 2018

Thank YOU!

A big thank you to all of our followers for supporting Long Way Home and the children of Técnico Chixot here in Comalapa, Guatemala. We also would like to inform you about some new GlobalGiving Projects which are coming up to give you more specific donation options for sponsoring the students of Técnico Chixot each month with tuition and school supplies, as well as the community projects mentioned, and scholarships for our Green Building Academy. We wish you all the best, please stay tuned and thank you for supporting Long Way Home!

We coudn't do this without you. Thank YOU!!

In Gratitude,

The Long Way Home Team

Selvin, High School student

Cob Oven Workshop

Medicinal plants Workshop

Permaculture workshop

LWH Academy July 2018

Students presenting community projects

Community of Xiquin Sanaii

Links:

Green Building Academy 2018

Back to all project reports

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 recieve an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.