Help 40 Guatemalan children unlock their potential

Each year our student art exhibit is one of our favorite events. This past October 28th we gave our community a museum experience with exhibitions of our 2 art classes: Elements of Art and Art History. We also had a special Art of Ancient Egypt exhibit. Around our exhibits, we had a total of 8 invitation stations which invited our guests to participate in hands on activities, such as writing out their name in hieroglypics, deciphering a hieroglyphic message, participating in a Matisse inspired cut out collage collaborative art work and more. The student art exhibit is a great platform for our students to show their families as well as other community members their creativity on display. We hope you enjoy the photos and want to take advantage to thank you for your generous donations which make this and our other learning activites around the year possible and help our students to unlock their potential. 

Thank you for your support,

Best wishes,

Colleen

Machismo is the social construction of gender roles which asserts that males are superior and dominant to females. In Guatemala, machismo prevents both our female and male students from reaching their full potential in various ways. For example, it is common for female students to have diffculties speaking up in a group or even responding to questions such as what is their name when asked. It is also common for male students to perceive preparing and serving meals and washing the dishes and cleaning up as the work of females. One of our pillar beliefs is that all students, both male and female, have the right to learn the skills they need to be independent. Part of that independence includes learning how to maintain one's own personal hygiene, how to grow one's own food, how to prepare our own meals, how to serve ourselves and others, and how to clean up after ourselves and organize and tidy up our environment. We work on building these essential life skills with the students in our Saturday Montessori program. We have a mixed team with 4 female teachers and 4 male teachers. We offer horticulture, traditionally a skill only learned by males, to both our male and female students taught by a female teacher. And all of our students, both male and female, learn to prepare their snack, wash their dishes and clean up their space after eating as well as all of our students participate in cleaning the work areas at the end of each Saturday session, Our hope with these activities is to break with community schemas which can impair students and prevent them from reaching their full potential and empower them with skills so that they may become independent adults. We thank you for your donation to this great program and hope that you will consider continued support so that we may continue to bring these opportunities to our students. In addition to photos, we have attached our newsletter for June and July to outline some of the ways we have used your donations to serve the students in our programs.

Thank so much for reading and for your support,

Colleen

• June-July Newsletter Centro Somos el Futuro (PDF)