Child Aid - Building Brighter Futures

Great news! Ethical Bean coffee is now available to coffee drinkers in the United States! The Vancouver, BC coffee roaster, owned by Lloyd Bernhardt and Kim Schachte, is a longtime supporter of Child Aid. Every December, for several years now, Ethical Bean has donated $1 for every bag of coffee they sell to Child Aid as part of their month-long “Kids to School” promotion. It’s been a tremendous help to so many children in Guatemala. If you’re in the United States, click over to the Ethical Bean website, click on the Amazon link, and support this generous business by purchasing a two-pound bag of their outstanding, fresh, Fair Trade coffee! Not only will you love the coffee (trust us!), but you’ll be supporting Child Aid’s scholarship program in Guatemala, and a great business, too!

December may be a long way off, but Ethical Bean is worth supporting now. And once December does finally roll around, you’ll be so hooked on their coffee, you’ll automatically participate in the “Kids to School” promo. Then, for every 100 bags of coffee Ethical Bean sells, a child in Guatemala gets a yearlong scholarship. Without these scholarships, most of these children would otherwise not be able to go to school – their families (many of which bring in combined incomes of less than $300/mo) simply cannot afford the hidden costs of school: shoes, uniforms, transportation and materials.

We owe such a huge thanks to Lloyd and Kim and everyone else at Ethical Bean for their wonderful support, and there’s really no better way we can thank them than by steering as many coffee drinkers to their excellent product as possible. So click on over and enjoy what will be the some of the best coffee you’ve ever tasted – you’ll help make difference in the life of a child in the process!

Can you think of an easier way to help out? We can’t!

Elba, the librarian at Pedro Molina, reading to students

I just returned from a quick trip to the Pedro Molina school where I visited the children’s library we support. While I was there, a class from the pre-school on the campus came for their reading hour in the library. Each a week, classes comes to the library to hear a story read to them using the reading techniques we teach to teachers across the country. In the past, our librarian did the reading at these. This time, because the pre-school teachers took our Teacher Training workshop on reading promotion, the director of the school asked if they could do the reading while in the library. The director of the school wants the teachers to develop the skills we teach and was hoping that the librarian we trained would observe and evaluate the teachers while they read to the children in the library.

I was amazed at the quality of reading which incorporated several of the techniques that we teach during our workshop. What was especially thrilling to me was to see how the kids were involved in the story.

Read more »

For those of you in the Portland, Ore. area, here’s a small but interesting event you might want to check out. It’s part of the Witness for Peace Northwest Speaker Tour

NAFTA Turns 15: A Look at Free Trade, Food Security and Migration in Oaxaca, Mexico

Take a deeper look at the effects of NAFTA, including resistance to genetically modified (GMO) corn, the impact of migration on sending communities, and the struggle for food security in Oaxaca’s indigenous communities. A discussion with Baldemar Mendoza Jiménez, Agro-ecologist with the Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juarez, Oaxaca.

Baldemar Mendoza Jimenez is the coordinator of the agro-ecology program for UNOSJO (the Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juarez, Oaxaca).  Sr. Mendoza is an expert on food sovereignty issues and the impacts of free trade agreements on indigenous farmers from Oaxaca.  UNOSJO is an indigenous organization that works with indigenous communities and organizations in the Zapotec region of the Sierra Juárez, located in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico.  UNOSJO has denounced the contamination of native corn in Oaxaca by genetically-modified (GMO) corn and is a leader within Oaxaca on food security issues.  Their efforts also focus on women’s issues, indigenous rights, and organic coffee production. 

Sr. Mendoza will speak about the impacts of NAFTA on indigenous communities in Oaxaca, including:

Details:
Sunday, April 5
12pm, Hillsboro United Methodist Church
168 NE 8th Ave, Hillsboro, OR

For more information, click here or contact Regional Organizer Beth Poteet, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or 503.287.7847.

Guatemala has the lowest literacy rate in Latin America. Less than 10% of children enrolled finish high school. Child Aid is working to change that. 

Check out this great new video that two of our supporters helped us make. Karena O’Riordan ran around Guatemala for days filming numerous Child Aid libraries and interviewing parents, teachers and librarians. John Kin, a producer at Oregon Public Broadcasting and a longtime supporter of Child Aid, helped us with the idea and put in loads of hours combing through Karena’s footage and putting this video together.

Not only is this a great video (Don’t you agree?), but it’s a perfect example of how our supporters make it possible for us to do things like this without having to spend a bunch of money. That means more money goes to the Guatemalan and Mexican children who need it.

Big thanks to both John and Karena for this! Let us know what you think of the video - and please forward it to your friends!

Anyplace is a good place to brush your teeth! This is a group of primary school kids brushing up beside the road, just below a school in Las Canoas Altas, a little town in the Lago Atitlán region. Most public schools have a tooth brushing program because oral hygiene in rural homes hardly exists. At CEDIN, the Montessori-type preschool in El Tejar, the kids gather around the central courtyard every morning to brush their teeth together. And they really go at it! I know, oral hygiene isn’t necessarily a Child Aid program – this just caught my eye that day, and the kids were having so much fun I had to stop and take a picture.

Finally, the books arrived to the Child Aid bodega in Guatemala!! It was a long haul, but our program coordinator, John van Keppel and Child Aid partner Rigoberto Zamora (of PROBIGUA) got them out after they were held up in port for over a month. The shipment of donated books (over $850K worth!) were trucked up from Puerto Barrios on the coast and arrived the bodega at 5am on Saturday, Feb 21. About 20 middle school boys from Pedro Molina school helped us unload the truck, box by box. Afterward we celebrated with soft drinks and chatted about cowboys, school and cell phones.

Now, John and Kristen Anderson (our volunteer coordinator) are going through the mountain of books and getting them ready for distribution to the many community libraries and teachers we work with. Spanish textbooks and educational materials will go to needy classrooms, storybooks will go to libraries, and more and more children will be able to check out books and take them home to read with (or to!) their families. 

Huge thanks to Hoopoe Books and International Book Project for the book donations and to our donors who make it possible to ship them down and get them in the hands of the children who need them. You can read more about Child Aid’s book distributions here.

Whew! Bob Vesely (our executive director) and I recently returned from a 10-day trip to Guatemala. It was filled with emotions: the excitement of seeing kids reading the children’s books we’ve donated; the joy of seeing our reading programs inspire children to want to read more; and the sadness of walking through some primary schools that are so impoverished they lack books entirely.

Here’s a photo of two first grade girls from a school in Las Canoas, above Lago Atitlán. I spoke with a fourth grade teacher at Las Canoas who told me that of the 23 students in his classroom, only four could really read well. By working with Las Canoas, getting our reading programs into the library and more books into hands of the children, we hope that these two girls enter fourth grade knowing how to read. And loving it!

I recently returned from Oaxaca, Mexico, essentially the birthplace of Child Aid 21 years ago. Then, my wife and I, co-founders of the organization, met some committed and wonderful parents and doctors who desperately wanted to help deaf and hard-of-hearing kids to escape their lonely and silent world and have a chance at a better life. The problem was there were no services, and these children were routinely excluded from school.

Testing for hearing impairment; CORAL’s early detection program

What a transformation I saw this year: kids getting therapy so that they hear and communicate, play with friends, and go to school; parents being trained to extend the therapy sessions to their homes;  testing outreach to the vast rural area of the state – there are 10,000 communities in Oaxaca State – so that hearing problems can be detected at a very young age and kids can learn to listen and hear while their brains are maximally receptive to language development; a well-equipped clinic for final diagnosis and fitting of hearing aids – on the grounds of a full-service hospital that serves the poor, La Clínica del Pueblo; a functioning board of directors guiding this organization, CORAL, which has been Child Aid’s partner all of these years.

Yes, the organization Child Aid started with is an adult now, and watching and nurturing its growth has been a labor of love.  And satisfaction as well —knowing that we and CORAL have given a shot at a brighter future to so many hundreds of kids!

In 2007, Child Aid began its Rural Librarian Training Program after recognizing that there was a desperate need for librarian training. The program has been hugely successful and is now a key part of our work. It’s an incredible program, and I thought you’d be interested in learning more about it. So here’s very brief summary:

Some Background
As you probably know, Child Aid has been working in Guatemala for over 15 years helping to establish and improve libraries in rural, mostly Mayan communities. Most rural librarians, however, have only a high school education, and virtually none have received any training. (Trained librarians typically work in Guatemala City for private schools and universities.) The purpose of the Rural Librarian Training Program is to promote and support the development of library science skills in rural librarians so that their libraries can provide better services in research, literacy, and community information.

Rural Librarians
The rural librarians are a dedicated group of individuals working hard in isolation with meager resources. They are aware of their modest skill levels and have been clamoring for more opportunities for training. The sad fact is that there is literally no one other than Child Aid offering these individuals the opportunity learn how to better run and improve their libraries. Helping these individuals acquire library science skills is an ongoing process and Child Aid does not want to see their awakened interest die. In 2007, we provided training to thirty librarians; in 2008, 43 librarians participated. This year, we hope to help more.

So who else benefits?
While the librarians who participate in the program directly benefit from the trainings, the real winners – and the reason we’re putting so much energy into this – are the literally tens of thousands of children who use the libraries every year. School teachers also benefit because part of the training is specifically designed to connect the library with the local schools through our hugely successful reading programs. The teachers then bring the reading programs into the classroom, which engages the students, inspires them to read and, as a result, helps them succeed and stay in school. We have also seen that the community as a whole benefits tremendously by having a resource that helps their children do better in school.

Our donors make this program possible!

I recently had an email exchange with Kristen Anderson and John van Keppel (two of our staff members in Guatemala) about lending libraries. As little as a few years ago, most of the 29 libraries Child Aid helped create with PROBIGUA were not lending libraries; children could use the libraries but they couldn’t borrow books. We feel lending libraries are extremely important, primarily because they allow kids to spend more time reading, which, in turn, helps them do better in school. So we’ve been working hard to get libraries to set up lending programs. It’s been a long but steady process.

The books Maria checked out at Melotto Library

Now, there are lending programs at seven Child Aid/PROBIGUA libraries: at Tiquisate, Chicacao, Tzanchaj, Tecpan, Chimaltenango, Pedro Molina and El Tejar. The library at Socorro (a partner school in Antigua for indigenous women) will begin loaning books this year, as will the library at Sunzo, Monterrico. Just to give you an idea, the Melotto Library, in Chimaltenango, loaned 1800 books in 2007 and 2100 books in 2008 – with minimal losses. Since the lending programs mean more time with books, we’re extremely excited about these developments.