Child Aid - Building Brighter Futures

With the New Year well upon us, we want to pause and thank you for everything you helped us achieve in 2010.  Last year, we served more children than ever before. In Guatemala, 7,414 kids from 26 communities participated in Child Aid literacy programs and, in Mexico, we treated and/or tested more than 2,600 impoverished children for hearing loss. 

Children in a remote classroom near Santa Lucía Utatlán, Guatemala, show off the new books they received through Child Aid’s Mobile Book Box program. These are the first usable books their classroom has had.

Thanks to generous donations from several US book publishers, we shipped more Spanish-language children’s books to Guatemala in 2010 than in any year in Child Aid’s history – 83,000 in all. Remote libraries and schools in over 50 towns and villages have already received books, and we plan to distribute the remaining materials throughout the first half of 2011. Through Child Aid’s Reading for Life literacy program, we ensure they are used regularly by children in their homes and as part of Child Aid reading programs.

Many of our supporters chipped in last year when they heard the the story about Xojolá, the remote indigenous community where teachers asked us to bring Reading for Life to their village.  By the end of 2010 we raised $18,000 for the community and began work on the library immediately.  We delivered hundreds of children’s books and will soon start literacy training for a new librarian and 21 local teachers. Our work in Xojolá is going extremely well. Check back soon for updates.

These are only a few of our accomplishments from last year. We couldn’t have done this without your support.

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.

In the rural community of Xojolá, where Child Aid plans to begin work this year, the school director, Alejandro Guarchaj Mas, shared his thoughts with us about his community’s need for educational improvement. Mr. Guarchaj explained that without substantial support from the government, their community has been left without adequate resources in their schools. (To put this into perspective, Guatemala spends $133 per year per primary grade student as compared to $10,548 spent in the U.S.)

Due to economic circumstances, many children must work to help their families.

“We need the program Child Aid offers,” he said. “There is not enough work in our communities. The children have to learn how to do what we do, but better. With better education, the children here will be able to develop new and effective ways to grow, produce, and sell coffee, bananas, and artesanía,” without leaving their communities.

This year, thanks to our donors, Child Aid will begin our reading program in Xojolá and help the community create its first public library ever. For the community’s children, this will mean greater educational opportunity, and for Mr. Guarchaj, it will be the realization of a dream.

Thanks to everyone who supported our literacy programs in Xojolá. We will have more updates about their progress soon.

From all of us at Child Aid and on behalf of the children we serve, we would like to wish you a very Happy New Year! Thanks to all our supporters who have helped bring literacy programs and much needed resources to Guatemalan children this year. This has been a year of incredible success and would not have been possible without our supporters. With your help we have been able to bring over 7,200 children into our literacy program, Reading for Life, and we hope to reach even more children in the coming year. Thank you!

To donate, please click here.

Here is Child Aid’s latest video, which illustrates the human impact of our work. Thank you to all our supporters for helping improve these children’s lives through literacy.  Your involvement makes all the difference! 

Congratulations to the 25 students who completed Child Aid’s Reading for Life Program! Just last week, these kids received diplomas from Child Aid literacy trainers, recognizing all their hard work and dedication to reading. What better way to spend vacation than reading! Before Child Aid’s Reading for Life program, these kids had virtually no access to books or literacy programs in their rural Guatemalan community of Tzumpango.

Three excited Reading for Life graduates at the library in Tzumpango.

Now they are even more excited, capable readers than before, with a library in their own town. Child Aid began working in Tzumpango a few years ago and has seen a huge growth in attendance at the library and increased interest in our literacy programs. See previous blog posting for more information about Child Aid’s work in this community.

Last week, Portland-based author Ann Cameron visited Socorro de Belen, a school in Antigua, Guatemala, where Child Aid has been working for many years. Socorro is a school for young indigenous women training to become teachers. Norma Guzman, a Child Aid literacy trainer, coordinated the visit because she has used Ann Cameron’s books with her students. Needless to say, the students at Socorro were thrilled to have this opportunity.

For many of the students, Ann’s book Colibri, was the first novel they had ever read. Many of the young women were amazed by accuracy of the book and enthusiastic to read a book about their own country. According to Norma, their interest in this novel and participation in Child Aid’s programs has inspired many to become avid readers. One young woman expressed that she is now on her 11th book of the year.

In Guatemala, where quality children’s and young adult’s books are nearly impossible to find, the impact Ann’s books, combined with our programs, is immeasurable. Thanks to our outstanding trainer, Norma, for arranging this visit and to Ann for all she is doing to help the youth of Guatemala become readers for life.

Ann has written several award-winning Spanish language books for children and young adults. The book that Norma uses, Colibri (Hummingbird), is a contemporary adventure story of a young Mayan girl and is set in Guatemala, where Ann lived for over 20 years.

To purchase Ann’s books, available in Spanish and English, click here.

Greetings from Guatemala!

What a difference time, training and leadership makes.

A few years ago the library in Tzumpango, Guatemala was much like any municipal library in the country. It had a few well-guarded books and almost no children’s books. Lending practices were restricted to approved teachers and for students only under very strict guidelines. In other words, few books were ever accessible for children to read.

Things are different now.

After three years of Child Aid trainings, head librarian Yolanda Taquiej has made tremendous changes.

Yolanda, the community’s librarian, in front of the newly renovated children’s library.

Yolanda’s first goal was to bring books to children by creating a lending program. Child Aid donated over 150 new Spanish-language story books and she began making a full inventory of their collection by cataloging the books using the Dewey Decimal System. Then she began loaning books, a practice which is practically non-existent in Guatemala. The library now loans out around 175 books a month, and has not lost a single book! Yolanda also implemented Child Aid’s Hour of Reading program to promote better reading skills for the community’s children. This year a small group of students have been coming to the library once a week to read a book together.

She asked for the Mayor’s approval to renovate a small community building to be used as a Rincón Infantil (Children’s Corner). The Mayor agreed and the community cleaned and painted the building, repaired the roof, and set up bookshelves. The community is inaugurating the space by implementing Child Aid’s Adventures in Reading, a school-year break program that helps children develop better reading skills. Thirty kids now participate in this program every day.

Child Aid trainer works with librarian sorting new books.

When Yolanda began working in the library there were about 50 users a day. Now over 200 users come to the library every day to read books and to participate in Child Aid’s reading programs. These are huge strides in a community that just a few years ago had an inaccessible library and no literacy programs.

This is a great example of how committed individuals in a community can create better learning opportunities for their children when given support, resources and materials they need. Thanks to Child Aid’s donors for helping make this possible for Tzumpango and many other communities.