Education Guatemala Project #12447

Break The Cycle Of Poverty Through Education in GT

by Friends of Ninos de Guatemala

Break The Cycle Of Poverty Through Education in GT

Project Report | Mar 12, 2013
We're counting on you!

By Megan Kadrmas | Operations Manager, Fundraising and Development

Student at EP

Every day, Niños de Guatemala welcomes almost 300 of the area´s poorest children into our schools. They arrive excited to play with their friends, ready to learn about new things and always hungry for more.

Sometimes, though, we have to invest a little more than pencils and books into a child's academic success. Fernando, for example, had trouble getting to school last year. His desk would sit empty 2 or 3 days a week, while our social worker paid frequent visits to his house looking for him. His mother, busy with younger siblings and too much work, was just as surprised as we were that Fernando was not in school.

Slowly, as the year went on, Fernando started coming more often. However, without the tireless work of our social worker, psychologist, academic coordinator, and school director, Fernando would surely not have stayed in school. So far this year, Fernando has had no absences.

NDG promises to provide Fernando and all of our students with the tools they need to get the most out of every school day, but we rely on your donations to present our students with the best education possible.

March 13, your support goes further towards offering this top-notch education to very deserving children. GlobalGiving is matching all donations up to $1000 at 30%. Plus, every donation helps us compete for bonus prizes from GlobalGiving.

We´re counting on your help tomorrow. Please take a moment to donate what you can, and share this message with your family and friends. Together, we can all make a difference!

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Jan 8, 2013
Happy New Year!

By Megan Kadrmas | Operations Manager, Fundraising and Development

Nov 27, 2012
Summer School Success

By Sam Datlof | Communications Officer

A volunteer helping one of our children read

First of all, we would like to thank all of you who have been so generous in the first days of our GlobalGiving campaign. Your giving makes an enormous difference—as you can see on the GlobalGiving website, we’re already about 10% of the way to our goal and going strong!

We also want to tell you a bit about what the money you donate can help us do. This week concludes Summer School at both of our schools, a program that has been a resounding success over the past two years. Summer vacation in Guatemalan schools normally occurs between October and December. However, we ask our children to come back for a fun-filled, yet educational month of school during November. The reason we do this is two-fold: First, it allows us to create positive associations with school for the youngest class that is experiencing school for the first time. If they love school, they are more likely to come back each day during the school year. The second, and more important reason that we run Summer School, is because so many of our families are coffee farmers. November is harvesting season, which means picking coffee from dawn to dusk, for children as well as adults. If we are able to keep most of them in school (our retention rates during summer school are very positive, around 90%), it means we are able to keep them away from the backbreaking labor that they would otherwise be doing.

Summer School has been a great success for a number of reasons. We have had wonderful volunteers from all over the world come help us run new and innovative classes for the children, from music class, to break dancing, to basketball. They have also been a huge help to our Guatemalan teachers in more traditional classes such as Reading, English, Science, and Math. Summer School has also been a success because we were able to collect enough funds to cover all of our operations. Most of this money came from individual donors like yourselves. This allowed us to purchase all the necessary supplies, pay the salaries of our Guatemalan teachers, and cover all other operational costs.

Thank you for your help. It is making a real impact on the lives of our children, and will continue to do so in the months to come.

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