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 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.

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.

For the past 12 years, beginning when he retired from his teaching position at a local school in Tecpán, Guatemala, Don Ramón has been doing everything he can to make his local library a better resource for children. Year after year, he requested help from the mayor’s office. He pounded on embassy doors in Guatemala City. He handwrote letters to international organizations and asked local residents to donate any books they had.

Each year, Don Ramón accomplished a little more: a bigger room, a set of encyclopedias, a new shelf. But after more than a decade of hard work, he still lacked one key ingredient: books for children.

Don Ramón, inside the library he helped bring to Tecpán.

That changed in 2010, after Child Aid met with Don Ramón and local teachers, and agreed to begin Child Aid’s Reading for Life program in Tecpán. We provided hundreds of children’s books for the library and hired a local carpenter to build colorful wooden furniture so the children had a place to sit and read. We provided training for the two librarians and helped them start story hours for the children. We also provided literacy training to 34 local teachers – most of whom had never stepped foot in the library.

Books, physical improvements and training are the key components of Reading for Life. The fourth is people like Don Ramón, who exemplifies our belief that people – not projects – are the best way to affect lasting change.

By working with Don Ramón to promote and improve the library, and by training local teachers and librarians, we help ensure local commitment to literacy. The result is more teachers reading to children, more children in the library, and more kids reading books. In the country with the lowest literacy rates in Latin America, that’s the result we want.

We post a lot of photos of the insides of libraries we help create. They tend to be bright, colorful, clean places that create an atmosphere where children want to read. What these photos don’t show are the day-to-day realities children face just outside those walls. Here are a few photos of the communities of Palá and Xojolá which illustrate how people live in rural Guatemala and the need children have for greater opportunities. Child Aid begins work in both towns this year to help the communities implement our childhood literacy programs.

Typical home in Palá with firewood stacked outside.

Many Guatemalans must collect firewood from afar to fuel their cooking stoves, such as this man in Xojolá.

Storefront and house made of adobe bricks in Palá.

Guatemala has the lowest literacy rate in Latin America and for indigenous women, the situation is even worse: As many as 75% of the women in the communities where we work cannot read or write. Child Aid is working to change this by developing partnerships with schools like Socorro de Belen.

These young women will be the first in their communities to from graduate high school.

Socorro, where Child Aid has been working for many years, trains young indigenous women from rural villages to be primary school teachers so they can bring literacy to their communities. (See blog posting for previous story on Socorro). The high school aged students come from nearly all of Guatemala’s 21 states and together speak at least 10 indigenous languages. For many of these young women, they are the first in their communities to finish high school and they will return to their towns with a teaching certificate.

Since we began working with Socorro, we replaced the library’s outdated, musty books with new storybooks, reference and text books. We helped the librarian catalogue the entire inventory and students are now able to borrow books through the lending program we helped them establish.

Learning to read will change this young woman’s life.

“Many of these young women had never read a book in its entirety before,” says Norman Guzman, Child Aid’s regional coordinator. “Now they read just for fun. One student says she can’t go to sleep without reading and is currently finishing the fifth book of the Harry Potter series.” (The books, in Spanish, were donated by Child Aid.)

These young women are beating the odds in Guatemala. They are multilingual and becoming the first in their families to graduate high school. They are developing a love of reading which they can pass on to children in their communities when they return as teachers. With continued support from Child Aid’s donors, even more young women will return to their home towns as motivated educators of literacy.