This project is currently providing a Critical-Thinking Program to 40 young people between the ages of 13 and 21 years. This program empowers their inherent potential to enter the workforce as sharp-minded employees and to create their own sources of income, helping these students become responsibly and courageous adults. Another aim of this program is also to create community leaders who will become the new role models for their families, friends, new in-coming students and future generations.
In Guatemala, men are culturally conditioned to work as little as possible yet be the boss of the family. Many young women have little or no power to decide for themselves about having a career. This situation is dramatically increased in the rural areas where many girls are married or pregnant by the age of 15. Continual education towards career development is not stressed by parents so the cycle of poverty and ignore continue from one generation to the next.
IHF will: 1) Support the career choices of both girls and boys with our critical-thinking and education sponsorship programs. 2) Educate both genders on equality and rights by shifting their perspective on culturally conditioned values. 3) Expand perspectives of who they think they are by using an approach based in perennial philosophy and critical-thinking techniques. 4) Increase their self esteem with tested cognitive and behavioral games.
This program aims to create a multi-generational movement whose leaders are empowered to preserve cultural diversity and to embrace responsibility in a global context. Our goal is to educate individuals both male and female to become career driven, responsible and compassion. This program will empower in them a dramatic shift in values leading to a fresh view of what it means to be a man or a woman that will then be evidenced in their relationships, careers and family lives.
