Education Guatemala Project #13203

Provide a Critical-Thinking program for 40 teens

by Integral Heart Foundation

Project Report | Nov 29, 2017
Learning And Loving Through Playing

By Debora Prieto Morais & Mick Quinn | Co-Founders

Because we believe that the future of our sponsored children can only be brighter through education, at the end of each year we create special cultural and educational events for our students.

This year we had two different events; the first with a local anthropologist who not only worked in the excavations of ancient Mayan sites but also as a forensic anthropologist unearthing and identifying the bodies of people who went missing during the recent Guatemalan civil war. This was a very interesting talk due to the fact that the philosophy students spent all year long investigating in their own recent history.

During this last week of classes we also rescued six puppies from a certain death by poisoning, and we had to bottle feed a fun task shared by all the adults and children. This resulted in a very touching and beautiful interaction between the staff, the little ones and these most vulnerable beings who needed our help.

This brings us to the second workshop on our responsibility towards animals given by two NGO´s, one Guatemalan, Castraciones Guaus & Miaus, and another from Costa Rica, ANPA. In this workshop we all participated, from the founders to the babies, and had a great, fun time learning about nature, respect to all beings, ecology, and care by playing games and sharing many laughs.

We believe that between all of us we can make a better world, therefore, thank you very much for making this possible and being such an integral part of making of this planet a much better place to live.

Happy Holidays to all of you. You are always in our hearts. Much love from all of your Guatemalan family.

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Sep 5, 2017
Teaching the Love of Reading

By Mick Quinn and Debora Prieto | Co-Founders

One of the most important projects at the Integral Heart Foundation is our Philosophy/Critical-Thinking Program. This program, which is mandatory for the children of our sponsored families, begins for the students when they enter high school, or at 13 years of age.

But also at the Integral Heart Foundation we have children of all ages. We believe that it is important to nurture the capacity for free thinking as soon as possible; to help them get to the point at which they can begin questioning, to become curious about the roots of their ideas and concepts, getting them to look at the ‘why’ of the world around them.

We affirm that they get to read because they like to do so, no because they have to. Of course example is the best teaching tool and this is why we dedicate a time every day to just reading. We have a small library, which we are working to expand and develop, with books that are appropriate to all ages, including those for the little ones.

Our senior students and support staff sit with our younger student and read together, telling stories of other countries, times, realms, cultures and so on.

The younger students are really loving it and they are eager for more, they even bring more books to the tables before we finish the last story so we can continue reading more.

Because of this, and as part of a new effort underway, there is a project being born at our school. A complete, small, yet comprehensive library that will be run by one of our senior students so everyone can bring books home and read as they please. We will keep you updated as this project progresses.

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” Dr. Seuss – I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

Our deepest appreciation and gratefulness to all of you for your support our work here and for allowing for these kids to travel to more and more places!

Much love to you all from the Integral Heart Foundation.

Debora in reading time with the younger ones

Blanca in reading time

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Jun 7, 2017
Eric and the cause of poverty

By Mick Quinn and Debora Prieto | Co-Founders

Eric (center) in this photo we took in 2010

At the Integral Heart Foundation we are always looking for our next superstar and we believe that this year we found a diamond. Eric is new in our philosophy/critical thinking class although he is not new to our programs. He is the third youngest of a family who has been with us since 2010 but it wasn´t until 2017 that he began attending to our class.

Eric is from a family of seven boys who live with their mom. Their dad passed away years ago and the mother couldn´t help her children with the school expenses on her own, therefore we found sponsors for the kids and they have been with us for all of these years. The good news about that is that we can see the kids growing up, and this is the case of Eric.

We first met Eric and his family in 2010 and since then we have been supporting them. We can say that we saw all the brothers growing up. When any of the kids from our sponsored families begin high school, usually around 13 years old, then they have to come to our critical thinking (CT) class. Eric began high school this year, therefore, he began attending to our CT class.

As you can imagine, in a family with so many boys, there is a little bit of competition between them. We witnessed several episodes in the past of not the best kind of competition between brothers. But with Eric things are different. He competes to excel. He only wins through knowledge, participation, thinking, healthy criticism and sharing of new ideas.

This year our class topic, The Cause of Poverty, is very different because of him and his input. His insights are always concise, clear and to the point. He is not ashamed to speak up, but he knows when, how, and what to speak about and how to express himself clearly on such a complex subject.

He is a great addition to our group and family and maybe he can be our next Guatemalan philosopher. For, we, too, believe that to resolve the issues of this country, Guatemalan must understand the reasons why they are in this horrible situation.

Thank you so much for supporting such diamonds who are so needed for our world today. Thank you all for supporting the Integral Heart Family.and

Eric at our school, photo taken 2017

Eric at CT class with his older brother Mario

Eric with Mario, Marvin and Anthony at our school

Family photo #2!

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