Education Guatemala Project #2617

Reading Village

by Reading Village

Project Report | Nov 25, 2010
Teresa is Grateful

By Linda Smith | Founder and Director

Teresa Morales Chumil

I'm in Guatemala interviewing teens for our reading promoter program. It's one of my favorite things to do because these youth inspire me so much. Take Teresa Morales Chumil, for example. She is 15, the oldest of four, and her family owns no land so they work as day laborers on someone else's land. Teresa's family of six ekes out a living on $120 a month; that's less than a dollar a day per person.

Her parents never attended school and cannot read or write. When I ask Teresa what her parents tell her about the importance of education she says her father tells her, "You have to fight to study." This phrase stops cold in my heart. It's true. Teresa and other impoverished youth here fight: struggle, sacrifice, toil and scrape enough together to pay for public school registration, monthly fees, transportation, uniforms, books, supplies and the like. What should be a right for every child is a fight for many. And in these communities where only 25% of children make it to the sixth grade, it's a fight that most kids lose.

Despite all the barriers in front of Teresa she has made it to middle school and has set her sites on college! This Thanksgiving I am grateful that Reading Village can offer her the opportunity to stay in school. And I am thankful for your generosity toward Reading Village that makes it possible.

If you have not made a donation yet this year, please know that gifts of all sizes have an immediate impact on our teens' lives and the children they read to.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Linda

Permalink

Oct 10, 2010
A Defining Moment

By Linda Smith | Founder and Director

For you and me, who love to read, it's hard to imagine an entire country where reading is not much valued and not regularly enjoyed. But this is the case in Guatemala. A colleague once heard it reported that of the Guatemalans who can read only 1% had read anything for pleasure that year. So imagine my delight at what happened the other day...
On October 1st Guatemala celebrated Día del Niño (Children's Day), and Daniel Guzmán our In-Country Coordinator and some of our teen reading promoters made their way to Concepcion's central plaza with the rest of the community to celebrate. And they each brought a book along...just in case.

After the singing of the national anthem, endless speeches and what not, the daycare teacher

unexpectedly invited Daniel to say some words. He seized the opportunity, the microphone and

Julio César (one of our teens) to translate into Kaqchikel. The whole community got to hear about

what it is we do from one of their own youth, and Julio had the presence of mind to introduce the

other teens and organize the children into two groups. Antonio and Luis (first-year reading promoters,

prepared with their books and activities) volunteered to lead the kids in story time in front of the

whole community. (See link to photos below.)

In this spontaneous moment a spark was lit. Parents who can't read, who can't afford to have books in

their homes, and who have never read a story to their own children, saw for the first time ever the joy

that reading brings their children and felt the satisfaction that comes with imagining a brighter future

for them. I have a feeling this is one of those defining moments we'll look back on one day when

Concepcion is a thriving, reading village.

If you've not yet made a donation this year, now is an opportune time to do so! On Tuesday,

October 12, GlobalGiving will begin matching donations made to Reading Village made only from

their website. (See link below.) Donations in the range of $10-$499 will be matched 30%, $500-$999 at 40% and

$1,000-$2,500 at 50%. There are limited matching funds available so the sooner after 12:01 am

Eastern on the 12th you make your donation the better. The matching opportunity runs through

October 21st, as long as funds last.

Thank you for all you do to bring the power of literacy to children,

Linda

Linda Smith

Founder and Director

Reading Village

Links:

Permalink

Sep 1, 2010
More of a Good Thing

By Linda Smith | Founder and Director

Last month we convened a group of amazing people with decades of experience in Guatemala, education, leadership development and literacy to help us take the good curriculum we developed for training our teen reading promoters and make it excellent.

This curriculum will be part of a training manual (funded by a grant from the Tecovas Family Foundation) that will enable us to hire more community coordinators and expand to more and more communities. Our vision is to have 480 reading promoters in over 30 communities reaching 480,000 children by 2020.

And expansion is already underway! Daniel Guzmán, our Program Coordinator, is currently in the community of Pujujil (Poo-hoo-HEEL) holding a meeting with community leaders and interested teens as he recruits a new crop of reading promoters. See here (http://www.readingvillage.org/2010/08/index.html) for a two-minute video of Daniel as he eloquently describes his heart-felt vision of our work with the children in his country.

There are several ways you can help us bring the power of literacy to more children. We need donations to buy books and materials for Pujujil, for scholarships for the new reading promoters and for their training.

In addition to donating you can help in the following ways:

1. Participate in 100 Book Day on November 27th (http://www.readingvillage.org/100-book-day.html).

2. Join and/or promote our Learning Journey to Guatemala, Nov 20-28 (http://www.readingvillage.org/learningjourney.html)

3. Bring Light Up Literacy to your synagogue for Hanukkah this year (http://www.readingvillage.org/light-up-literacy.html).

4. Bring Literacy for Lent to your church next year (http://www.readingvillage.org/literacy-for-lent.html)

Thank you for all you do to bring the power of literacy to children,

Links:

Learn more here.

Permalink

‹ 1 ... 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 ›

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.