Lets Be Ready

I had only heard about this small community of fifty families, who lived fifteen minutes from Nora’s town of Santo Domingo Xenacoj. The prognosis was not good…contaminated water, open fires for cooking, and students who appeared extremely small for their age. I was braced for the worst.

 We traveled the back roads by private van to Xenacoj , where we stopped to see Nora’s center. She and the younger members of her family will live there and will house donors and visitors who want to visit the nearby “Let’s Be Ready” schools, and if they choose take Spanish classes. The house was much larger than I had imagined with a great deal of light and comfortably sized rooms for guests as well as a communal great room adjoining a kitchen. At his point, it lacks windows and the water hook up. Then the Bacajols will need to furnish it.

Now we circled around the mountainous road to Los Izotes. I was excited to see what progress Lidia had made with this high needs community in the two months she had been teaching. The terrain seemed very fertile growing a large variety of flowers for export and blackberries as I was later to discover. It was hard to imagine anyone being malnourished in this verdant mountain area.

 We arrived and climbed down a very steep, narrow path to a small turquoise house donated by one of the local residents. Lidia and the kids along with their mothers and one father greeted us warmly. We passed the garden, planted by the mothers, which was already growing beets, carrots, radishes, and a few vegetables I did not recognize. Large colorful signs designated each row. What a great way to learn how to read! How important to learn to grow your own variety of vegetables. Later I was to discover a Sawyer water filter and plans for a wood burning stove. Things were looking up.

As I entered the classroom Lidia was assembling the kids in a circle to begin their morning routine. All but one very small child entered in enthusiastically, naming off the students present and locating their names on the Word Wall. Attendance was followed by the weather, the calendar, and a welcoming song in which each child introduced herself to me and shook my hand. I was totally blown away at how much they had learned in such a short time. Lydia had done such an amazing job with kids who have mothers, most of whom have never attended school.

These shy but appreciative mothers provided a healthy bean sandwich and fresh banana for the snack along with a glass of atole.

After the break, the fun began with the educational materials I had brought. Lidia let the kids open the box and choose their favorite item. One 4 year- old girl was mesmerized by the books. Others were drawn to the puzzles of the alphabet, numbers, and human body. One of the youngest boys was running his fingers over the bugs on a numbers chart. Lidia was playing with an Afro puppet dressed in a red and white polka dot dress Fred and I were given in Cuba. I could see what fun she and the students could have with that.

Some of the kids were most excited about the soccer ball so we walked along a path to an open field and the students and their older siblings had a rollicking game of soccer.

Seeing these kids living in such challenging conditions, so happy and thriving, their parents involved and committed, and lead by an extraordinary teacher really made my heart sing! This garden of students is being watered and cultivated with a gentle hand that insures their growth and a promising start in life.

2014 Annual Report

Because of donor support in 2014, early childhood education was delivered to more than 300 children in 23 communities in Guatemala. Their generosity has sustained Let's Be Ready for 6 years now, and positioned us to expand in the most rural villages through the new program Magic Classroom.

Income and expense items of note.

We were short $ 3,093 due to increasing stipends by 5% each year and paying travel for teachers, while not asking for an increase in the in the basic donation amount of $1500 per teacher. Instead we have opted to ask for material donations.

I am still covering the administrative expenses @ $5,000

Some sponsors are giving partial scholarships to their teachers to go to college on the weekends.

Looking ahead to 2015, I solicited extra funds for materials and through some generous donations, it appears that there will be sufficient funds to balance the budget next year at about $50,000 with the number of teachers remaining about the same.

The Nutrition Program is fully funded for 2015, as it has been for the last 2 years, by grants from a Swiss Herrod Foundation and Feed the Dream. They get a separate accounting.

Establishment of our own Non Profit

This year we were granted nonprofit status for Let's Be Ready. Through a change in the tax law, new simplified application and reporting rules was created for small 501c3’s with donations of $50,000 or less. We are extremely grateful to Beth and Marlon Dearden of World Link  Partners for supporting us during our developing years.

Innovations for 2015

We have 7 major initiatives for 2015 which will carry over into 2016 as well.

These first three:

1. We have hired Margarita, one of teachers who had been replaced by a government teacher in community nearby Antigua (hooray for the Government) and put her to work learning how to evaluate children entering and when they leave our classrooms, primarily for vocabulary skills. She is a great teacher and will also visit and coach the teachers in their classrooms.
2. We are going to have more books in the classrooms and training to use them. Lucy is our developer of curriculum guides for the teachers and is the primary trainer. We will publish her guides for the 10 Star Books this year. Look for it on Amazon.
3. Nora will be spending 7 months in the USA, immersed in English. This is significant for both Nora and the long range plan for having Guatemalans administer the program with less help from me. Nora agreed to have all of the classrooms and teachers functioning perfectly before she leaves in May. This means:

• that new teachers are trained,
• they are all sending emails to their sponsors,
• they are tracking the success of their graduates,
• they are using the books and Creative Curriculum,
• Margarita is evaluating the kids and coaching the teachers to increase the verbal skills,
• the mothers are all providing the food and cooking nutritious snacks,
• visiting sponsors have a great visit to their classrooms,
• Jose is providing leadership for the mothers to change the diets of their family and their diet in the first 1000 days of their babies lives.
• and all other administrative details under control.

and these four more:

1. There will be a volunteer from the USA for several months, Eric Schliemann, whose regular job it is to evaluate kids readiness for primary school. He has begun to accompany Margarita to visit the classrooms.
2. We are going to expand the use the Global Giving web pages as our primary “go to” location for all information about us, including up to date reports. Although people can donate there, they charge a 15% fee. On the other hand, donors can get matching funds, at times up to $500, and the fee is waived. We will be using $2000 in matching funds from the December Microsoft Foundation Youth Spark Drive in 2014 to be applied in 2015.
3. There is a great opportunity for raising funds in the future using a combination of Global Giving and the social media, which I know nothing about. I continue to look for someone who does and is willing to show us how.
4. We are going to have 8-10 Promoters (i.e., not formally graduated teachers) using the Magical Classroom Program in the most rural areas in 2015. I have personally funded $10,000 of the $13,000 it has cost to develop this program over the past 3 years. A group of very talented Guatemalans who originally lead our "clowns in the park" program have written and developed the recorded curriculum, and Lucy (also a teacher displaced by the arrival of a Government teacher) develops the activities to go with them, consults on the curriculum, and trains the Promoters. I have hired Lola, a Mayan woman from the Lake to be the director to select, train and check up on the Promoters. We have one partner so far, Miracles in Action, who is sponsoring 4-5 Promoters in the rural Cuchamatanes mountains where they have built schools. Fundraising and reporting will be in a separate 501c3, Magical Classroom.

It is apparent that we have some ambitious goals for 2015. We want to continue to improve Let's Be Ready in curriculum development and teacher training. We are going to expand the Magic Classroom into the more rural areas, develop more recorded programming, activities, and translations. With your continued support, we remain committed to improving early childhood education in Guatemala. We thank all donors for being part of vision and the reality,

Fred Zambroski, Founder