KEEP GUATEMALAN GIRLS IN SCHOOL

Nearly 200 girls representing all of the San Pedro Sacatepéquez rural middle schools were recognized as community leaders and graduates of the Leadership Institute during the annual ADIMTU Jamboree that marked the end of the 2016 school year (January to October in Guatemala). This much-anticipated event celebrated the success of this community-wide program that impacts some 800 young teen students and their families annually across the villages of San Pedro. The Jamboree combines honoring the girls’ accomplishments with a program that motivates them to set personal goals for staying in school and a high-school fair that informs them about options for continuing their studies. Thirteen local area institutions participated in the school fair this year, dispatching representatives who meet personally with the girls to help them understand and consider the possibilities.

This cohort of girls is the first to have completed all three years of the now-robust Leadership Institute which they entered in 2014, beginning with La Vida de Mi Mamá. La Vida guided the girls and their mothers thru a year-long curriculum of workshops and interviews with their mothers to learn their moms’ life stories. Each girl wrote and illustrated a book to capture what she’s learned about her mom’s life, ultimately presenting her mom with this precious book which promptly became a family keepsake. In the process, the mothers and daughters established a special relationship of trust as a foundation for all that followed. The girls flourished and found their voices in their second year in the program with La Lectura Familiar, reading and exploring books together and then taking books home to read aloud with their families. In their third and final year of middle school, the Leadership Institute engaged the girls in Mi Hermanita with each one “adopting” a little sister in second or third grade, whom she tutored, mentored and encouraged to stay in school and follow her dreams.

With the girls now gathered to celebrate their achievements, ADIMTU organized a full program that included motivational talks by accomplished local area women who came from the very same villages and shared their real-life stories of successes and setbacks. This set the stage for the girls to complete a Vocational Aptitude and Preference Survey on the spot and receive additional information about some of the career options that would complement their individual strengths and inclinations. The girls were further encouraged to stay in school by several notable women from the Department of Education who, by their very presence, spoke volumes about the potential for educated girls to become leaders of a better future for all of Guatemala.

Links:

• WWT Website
• ADIMTU Website