Grow brighter futures for 250 Guatemalan children

At Planting Seeds, we believe in empowering communities through education, however we know that our students and their families need more comprehensive support to grow brighter futures. That's why we've expanded our preschool programs to provide wraparound services such as parent training, book-lending and  nutrition programs among others, so our students and their families are better equipped to learn and grow, both at home and in school. We are committed to making a positive impact in rural communities throughout Guatemala. Watch this video to learn more about how we're transforming lives and shaping brighter futures for the next generation! Thank you for your support!

Links:

• Holistic Preschool Programs Videos

As the Guatemalan School year closes, we end this year with a lot of excitement. All Planting Seeds operated preschools have returned to full-time in person classes, and we have finished our first year of partnership with organizations CAN and WINGS to provide nutrition and health services to all families. We are looking forward to working with two new partner schools next year to expand our reach to ten preschools implementing the methodology!

Our team has done an incredible job growing the number of families we reach while improving quality at the same time. This year, our entire staff received a variety of professional development, we improved elements of our teacher and community facilitator training programs, and we provided more comprehensive support in all of our preschools including book lending and parent training modules. 

Last week our six-year-old students are graduating from our preschools, and we couldn't feel prouder. Our students, their parents and teachers went above and beyond to achieve this milestone. Congratulations students and best wishes for your future!

As always, thank you so much for your support and for being part of the PS family. This wouldn't be possible without all of you! Please click here to see a  video which highlights some of the six year olds who graduated from our preschool and will move on to first grade.

Links:

• Planting Seeds Video - Graduation

We want to recognize and applaud our teachers for continuing to teach with love and empathy despite the difficulties that have arisen over the past couple of years. From brainstorming ideas to teach our preschoolers remotely to helping students adapt to a hybrid methodology. Our teachers have gone above and beyond, consistently delivering the same quality education with a smile on their faces.

We are excited to announce that in July, we will begin a new transition to have all our students back in the classrooms.

 We will start with larger groups of 6 children 4 days a week, and beginning in August, we will have full groups in all Planting Seeds preschools. 

Teachers, staff, and parents feel that we are ready to go back to school fully.

We can't wait to be together again!

One of Planting Seeds’ core beliefs is that every child deserves a right to a high-quality education. For this reason, we continually search for new partnerships to improve the quality of education throughout the country. Planting Seeds builds and operates our own schools, but also partners with non-Profit Organizations and Municipalities to implement our play-based methodology. 

In November of 2021, we provided intensive training to two new partnerships: The Municipal Preschool of Pastores and Colegio Berea. These schools work with high-need communities with lack of access to quality education. We are extremely excited about both of these partnerships and highlight each one below.

We are excited to work with the Municipal School of Pastores and utilize this experience to open the doors to working with more municipalities in other communities and pushing local governments to provide high-quality education to their constituents. The school director, Silvia Valle, learned about the methodology from one of our previous partner schools and was the lead advocate to bring the methodology to her Municipal School of 60 students.

We learned about Colegio Berea from our partnership with Asociación REKKO who has implemented our methodology since 2014 in San Pedro, Yepocapa. Last year REKKO approached us to see if we could work with them to expand Planting Seeds’ methodology within the region. In November, we collectively provided a scholarship to the teachers of Berea who are now implementing the methodology in their preschool. We will continue working with REKKO to provide a scholarship to a new school in the region annually. 

In addition to these new partnerships, we continue to provide more comprehensive support in all of our preschools. All Planting Seeds teachers received sexual and reproductive health trainings in collaboration with WINGS and each school is coordinating trainings and clinics for the families they work with. We are also working with multiple partnerships to build a nutrition program in Planting Seeds operated schools. Our schools in Sacala and Tioxya now have a full snack program and parents will receive nutrition training throughout the school year. 

Over the next few years, Planting Seeds strives to improve the quantity of children receiving high-quality education and the quality of our programming in each community. Thank you so much for your support in helping us grow and expand our impact!

We are already in October, and our students are ready to graduate another school year!

Currently, in Guatemala, the pandemic is at a very dangerous stage. Many Planting Seeds families have lost loved ones to Covid and the economic and additional effects has many family members worn down and stressed about what is to come.

Planting Seeds students have been in a virtual/hybrid learning environment for almost two years now. Even though the Covid vaccine is available in Guatemala, it has been challenging for families to get vaccinated. On one hand, we have a lot of misinformation about the vaccine spreading around, which causes a lot of fear. On the other hand, the few vaccination centers in the country make people wait in line for 6-7 hours to get vaccinated.

Many of the families we work with live day to day and have found it very difficult to miss an entire day of work and transport themselves to a vaccination center.

On September 28th, we were able to work together as a network of organizations to provide a vaccination clinic to vaccinate 648 people in the community!

When we learned about the possibility of hosting a vaccination center in Zone 3, Planting Seeds hosted and led an emergency network meeting to promote the clinic within the community. Our partner organizations Safe Passage and Creamos were able to host the clinic and, the local health center worked with the National Vaccination Center to provide the vaccine. During the day of operations, partner organization Iniciativa Guatemala hosted an information session to answer questions and concerns community members had about the vaccination and Sigo Vivo provided on-site doctors for the clinic. Each other organization helped by knocking on doors in the community and spreading the word through their networks and social media channels. It was an incredible team effort that would not have been possible without a network of organizations working together. In addition to the event, we have been working to gather data about the vaccination status of every Planting Seeds family in all the regions we work. By learning about who has been vaccinated, who hasn't, and concerns surrounding the vaccine, we are better able to offer support and provide the information needed for families to make an educated decision.

In addition, we have been planning the 2022 school year with the hope of getting students back into our classrooms. Safety will always be our top concern, but we hope we will mitigate much of the risk by getting a large percentage of our population vaccinated and having rigorous safety protocols. We hope to continue our hybrid program in 2022. We are looking to have students come to school almost a full day twice a week, which will allow them to engage with their classmates and receive individualized instruction from the teacher. This will also help parents as it will present a daycare option for them twice a week and reduce their workload as the sole educator of their kids. Parents will continue to play an active role in educating their kids by doing in-home education on Fridays, receiving monthly training, participating in our book lending program, and supporting their children daily with active play and stimulation at home.

We look forward to sharing our finalized plans with you soon!