Child Aid - Building Brighter Futures

Pasaq, Guatemala – Three years ago, when Child Aid helped Alberta Guarchaj launch a school-break reading program in her village’s new library, fewer than 10 children showed up. Alberta continued to participate in Child Aid’s librarian training sessions, and she tailored the program, known as Adventures in Reading, to fit the needs of her village.

Children participating in reading activities during Child Aid’s Adventures in Reading program in Pasaq.

The following year, 30 children turned out for the program, and Alberta continued to promote it in her community. Because books were formerly rare in Pasaq, even in the village school, parents began to take interest in the program. Most adults in the village are unable to read and know from experience that literacy has tangible economic benefits.

Throughout Guatemala, impoverished parents, especially women, express sadness about their inability to contribute more to their families economically. For most of them, the obstacle is the same: they cannot read.  So parents in Pasaq saw Adventures in Reading as an alternative. The program could help their children avoid the crippling trap of illiteracy. The more time their kids spent in the library, the quicker they were learning to read and the better they performed in school.

In 2011, Alberta conducted Adventures in Reading again. But this year, 70 to 100 children crammed into the library each day to listen to the stories she read. They pulled books off the shelves to read to themselves, and they participated in the literacy activities that form the heart of the program.

At a recent Child Aid Librarian Training Workshop, Alberta told librarians from other villages about her successes with Adventures in Reading. She described children beginning to read on their own and checking out books to bring home to their families. She talked about improvements children were making in their writing skills, and about parents attending reading sessions with their kids.  And she talked about how the program, combined with Child Aid’s other work in the village, is creating opportunities for her community that never before existed.

For Child Aid, the success of Adventures in Reading in Pasaq is another indicator that our program works. Literacy doesn’t happen overnight. It takes long-term commitment and requires flexible programs that communities can adopt and make their own. This year, a total of 21 villages conducted our Adventures in Reading program, engaging thousands of children in reading activities during the three-month school break.

At five and seven years old,  Joselyn and Karen Guarchaj already face the sad possibility of living lives of extreme poverty, just as their family has for generations. But thanks to Child Aid and its supporters, the two sisters also face another possibility: a future in which they know how to read and possess the education they need to lift themselves from poverty. That opportunity is one that their parent’s never had.

Joselyn and Karen Guarchaj (at right) are second-year participants in Child Aid’s school-break reading program.

Joselyn and Karen are participants in Child Aid’s Reading for Life literacy program. Thanks to the program, they now have a fully stocked library in their village and a full-time librarian, trained by Child Aid. Through the program, all of the teachers in their village are receiving training so that they can learn how to teach reading more effectively. (As throughout Guatemala, most of the teachers in their village are young and have little training beyond what they received in high school.) 

Outside of the school year, Joselyn and Karen also have access to a school-break reading program called Adventures in Reading.  Child Aid created this program to keep children engaged in reading activities during Guatemala’s three-month school break. The girls have participated in the program for two years in a row.

For Child Aid, improving literacy in a village like Joselyn’s and Karen’s goes far beyond delivering books and creating libraries. We do both of these and know they are critical components of an effective literacy program. But we also know that to truly improve literacy in a community that has never even had books, we must go further.

For this reason, we make long-term commitments to the villages where we work. We provide one-on-one training for teachers for a minimum of three years. We help communities identify, hire and train librarians from their own villages so we can foster local investment and ensure that the libraries we help create stay open to children every day. Reading for Life is a multifaceted program and, because of this, it works.

Joselyn and Karen could easily have faced a future where illiteracy and poverty were their only paths. But thanks to Reading for Life and Child Aid supporters, there are others.   

Before Child Aid brought Reading for Life to their village, these children in Guatemala had no access to books or reading programs. By helping them learn to read and succeed in school, Child Aid provides children opportunity and the hope for a better future.

Recently, I had the immense pleasure of showing three of our Reading for Life program staff members from Guatemala around Portland, Oregon. The purpose of their visit was to spend time shadowing teachers and to share their experiences in literacy work with students, volunteers and Child Aid supporters. Child Aid recruits and trains its literacy staff from regions where we work.

Graciela Sajbochol (right), a Child Aid literacy trainer, reads a book out loud with a student during her visit to the U.S.

U.S.-based international organizations routinely send workers to villages in the developing world to carry out their missions. But rarely do nonprofit workers from the developing world – particularly indigenous people – have a chance to come here to share their perspectives with people in the United States.

Carlos Pos Ben (right), a Child Aid literacy trainer, learns about classroom activities with a school principal.

Carlos Pos Ben, a Kaqchikel Mayan, was one of the staff members, and this was his first time ever on an airplane. “All I’m hoping from this experience is to learn,” said Carlos, who, along with coworkers Graciela Sajbochol and Norma Guzmán, visited several Portland-area schools, as well as Portland State University’s Bilingual Teacher’s Pathway program, where they had the opportunity to observe classroom activities, as well as discuss ideas about literacy and educational practices with educators.

In the end, our staff were absolutely thrilled from the visit. “My family is so proud of me,” said Carlos. He stepped back and expressed his life-long passion for literacy and education. While many growing up around him didn’t give it much thought, Carlos loved reading and the many opportunities it allowed for him – such as being the first in his family to finish school. “I want to share what I have learned from this visit with the children I work with. There are many opportunities out there for those who have a passion like me for reading and education,” Carlos said, smiling.

Graciela, Norma and Carlos share stories about Guatemala with U.S. students.

We’d like to thank Milwaukie Elementary School / El Puente Bilingual Program and all the schools for opening their doors to our organization.

I met Gerson Barreno (pictured) earlier this year, and he told me he used to struggle to teach reading to his first and second grade students. His classroom lacked books and he had almost no training in how to teach reading or keep his students’ attention.

Gerson Barreno teaching inside his corrugated metal classroom in Xecotoj, Guatemala.

Things began changing for Gerson when Child Aid delivered hundreds of children’s books to his school and started its Teacher Training program for Gerson and his fellow teachers. The program includes one-on-one, classroom-based instruction.

I thought about Gerson when I ran across this recent New Yorker article, by Atul Gawande, in which he describes a study that demonstrated the great importance of classroom-based coaching for teachers:

California researchers in the early nineteen-eighties conducted a five-year study of teacher-skill development in eighty schools, and noticed something interesting. Workshops led teachers to use new skills in the classroom only ten per cent of the time. Even when a practice session with demonstrations and personal feedback was added, fewer than twenty per cent made the change. But when coaching was introduced—when a colleague watched them try the new skills in their own classroom and provided suggestions—adoption rates passed ninety per cent. A spate of small randomized trials confirmed the effect. Coached teachers were more effective, and their students did better on tests.

One-on-one, classroom-based coaching is precisely what Child Aid does for hundreds of teachers in neglected rural schools in Guatemala. Last year, we conducted more than 1,000 classroom-based training sessions for teachers who have little or no access to ongoing education that would help them teach reading better.

I didn’t know it either, but it’s true. It’s National Coffee Day!

Guatemala is one of the world’s top producers of coffee, and many of the children involved in our literacy program work seasonally in the coffee industry. Xojola and Pasaq are just two of several coffee communities that participate in Reading for Life, our flagship literacy program in Guatemala. Help support our work in these villages by donating here.

A family drying green coffee beans in the village of Pasaq, a Child Aid partner community

This is also a perfect time to thank the coffee companies that support our work.

- Ethical Bean, in Vancouver BC, is a major supporter of our scholarship program in the town of El Tejar, helping put over 100 impoverished children through grade school and junior high. 
- Jim’s Organic Coffee has partnered with us for years, first to help bring a new library and classrooms to the village of Tzanchaj and now to support Reading for Life in that community.
- Portland Roasting, a Child Aid hometown partner and longtime local coffee company, is helping us bring Reading for Life to four coffee communities in the Guatemalan highlands.

Our warmest thanks to each of these companies for making our literacy work possible.

A year ago, if you took a bus out to the indigenous village of Godinez, high above Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, you’d have found an elementary school devoid of books. It’s hard to imagine a school without books, but it’s true – and not just in Godinez. It’s a reality in rural communities throughout the country. No wonder Mayan children face such difficulties learning to read.

A teacher in Godinez, Guatemala, holds up the only book she has in her classroom.

In 2010, we launched our Books to Villages program to address this problem. Through the program, we deliver rotating boxes of children’s books – by car, motorcycle or truck – to our remotest partner communities. Then we distribute them to classrooms and help teachers set up lending and reading programs.

This year, we expanded the program to Godinez. As in other communities, it’s been a huge success. Now, not only are children taking books home, they’re reading out loud to their parents and siblings. Graciela Sajbochol, the Child Aid literacy trainer who works in Godinez, told us that the kids are even using techniques that they learned in Child Aid’s classroom literacy sessions.

“They read the story once,” Graciela told us, “and then they read it again, but change some important detail. Then their families have to catch the mistake. It’s a simple comprehension exercise that they’re repeating at home. It’s wonderful to see.”

Through innovative and imaginative programs, Child Aid and its supporters are helping indigenous children learn to read and get the education they deserve.

As always, thanks for helping make these programs a reality!

Child Aid Literacy Trainer, Graciela Sajbochol, reads aloud to children in Godinez, Guatemala.

“Foreign governments should [insist] on more education, more health services and work.”—Oscar Julio Vian Morales, Guatemala’s archbishop

This fascinating video reveals the challenges of maternal mortality and high birthrate that many Guatemalan families face. Several organizations are working locally on initiatives to improve the overall health of women in poor communities. However, as the video shows, there many obstacles in this complex situation and no clear solutions. In this context, Child Aid continues to work to increase overall access to education which in turn, offers girls and young women more opportunities and a wider range of choices. Our literacy work provides the basic tools and skills needed to escape a life of poverty.

This week is National Library Week! To celebrate, help Child Aid create better libraries for some of Guatemala’s poorest children.

In the United States, it’s easy to take libraries for granted. They are free, welcoming public spaces where children can learn, study, and of course, borrow great books. Many libraries offer free classes and homework help, provide community resources, host author readings and advertise local events. Imagine your community without a library.

Kids reading new books in the library Child Aid helped create in the town of Las Canoas. Thanks to our donors we helped the community build new shelving and furniture.

In most rural impoverished villages in Guatemala, libraries are extremely rare and high-quality educational resources are even less common. Child Aid works to change this. We help indigenous communities create libraries that provide access to books and reading programs for local children. Child Aid stocks these libraries with new children’s books and helps librarians establish after-school and summer reading programs. With these new opportunities children finally have access to the resources and materials that will help them advance educationally. In a country where most Mayan children drop out of school by 3rd grade, these opportunities can be the stepping stones needed to escape a life of poverty.

How can you celebrate National Library Week?

Donate to Child Aid. We will use your gift to bring libraries to rural Guatemalan towns for the first time ever.

Give a gift to Child Aid in honor of the librarian in your life, and we will send a tribute card.

Child Aid literacy programs do much more than help children learn to read. The literacy trainings we provide are transformative and empowering to librarians and teachers and have rippling effects across local communities.

Teachers and librarians learn skills and tools to implement effective reading programs, but they also gain personal confidence with these new abilities. Before participating in Child Aid trainings, Luis, a librarian in the community of Chicacao, had a fear of public speaking which gave him “cold hands.”  Now he says he has completely overcome this fear, enabling him to be a more effective educator.

Luis follows up with Claudia, a Child Aid trained teacher, in her classroom.

Other teachers echo the same sentiment expressed by Luis. “I used to be afraid to try new things or to speak up for what I wanted,” says Flor de Maria, “but now I have the courage and skills to be a better leader.” Flor was a teacher who was recently promoted to school director in her community of Chicacao. She travels to nearby communities to promote reading and train other teachers.

Flor de Maria presents the new Child Aid training manual to a group of teachers and librarians.

After participating in Child Aid trainings, many teachers and librarians are taking an increasingly active role in their communities, not just in their schools. These teachers and librarians are becoming more vocal community advocates, such as the librarians of Pasaq. (Read previous story about a student in Pasaq here.) After learning of an upcoming meeting with the regional school superintendent, all three community librarians wanted to attend in order to express their opinions and show their support for Child Aid literacy programs. One of the librarians said, “I feel better equipped and motivated to participate in the development of my community through education.”

Child Aid’s literacy programs not only teach young students essential skills, but they help develop inspired local leaders who are dedicated to community transformation through education.

Juan Byron Guarchaj (age 10) lives in the rural town of Pasaq, Guatemala.  He goes to school in the morning and spends his afternoons harvesting coffee or bananas to earn money for his family.  He chops firewood in the mountains and carries it into town in giant bundles on his back.  Around dusk, he spends an hour or two in the library that Child Aid helped create last year. 

After attending Child Aid’s summer reading program, Juan aspires to become a doctor.

In November of 2010, during Guatemala’s three month school break, Juan participated in Pasaq’s second Adventures in Reading program, which helped more than 25 local children work on their reading skills while school was out.  “I want to be a doctor,” said Juan, “and I want to do Adventures in Reading again this year.”  He’s not alone: Parents in 20 towns and villages enrolled a total of 1,605 children in Adventures in Reading last year.  This is double the number of children who participated in the program the year before.  We are thrilled with the success of this program and glad parents are taking an active role in our work.