Help 570 children with their educational licenses

Ninos de Guatemala (NDG) provides 550 low-income Guatemalan children with access to the quality education they deserve. NDG operates 3 own schools, and helps children get "Skills for Success" in education and life. In 2021 we could provide tablets to high school students and then we identified we needed better school platforms at all levels for the 2022 school year.

By providing a generation of Guatemalans with this type of education, NDG strives to replace a vicious cycle with a virtuous one. As we participated on Giving Tuesday last November to raise funds for the four main educational licenses, our outcome was favorable and we were able to purchase 95 Zunun licenses to be used for students from 8th grade to 11th grade at our three schools, which is a platform that delivers the school contents as required by the Educational Ministry and 160 Achieve 3000 to be used by students from 7th to 11th grade at the three schools as well, which is the platform we use to stimulate, practice and improve reading and writing abilities for Spanish and English skills. 

We are half-way through the goal of this project, with all the Giving Tuesday donations we will start 2022 with 2 of the 4 necessary educational licences. Our fundraiser is still open, we invite you to donate at this link to help us reach our final goal of providing the kids with the four educational licenses they need in order to give the best way of learning for this school year as we hope to start a hybrid program (if admitted by the educational Ministry and Covid cases) in mid February.

Thank you once again for showing your support and kindness to Niños de Guatemala and helping us reach this beautiful dream. 

Best wishes,

The NDG team

As you know our skills for success program focuses on 5 essencial skills we believe all our students should have. These are our updates on each of them:

Emotional Intelligence:

Talks have been given to adolescent students and their parents to provide some tools that will allow them to manage the pressures and challenges of the pandemic and reduce cases of drug addiction, violence and early pregnancy.

Spanish literacy / English language competency:

• Spanish: The program for the most part was suspended due to the pandemic. In the primary schools and the secondary school, efforts have been made to promote reading in students, mainly by sending reading material home and assisting children through phone calls, giving readings assisted by WhatsApp and giving sporadic personal tutorials. In highschool, students are encouraged to practice their reading and writing skills through the Zunun platform.
• English: The effectiveness of the Dual Immersion program has been greatly reduced. English classes are carried out through reading and writing assignments. The lack of volunteers diminishes the direct contact our students had with the english language.

Math and Science: 

Our main vehicle for transferring these skills -PBL (Project Learning) - is currently suspended in all three schools.

Arts, Culture and Identity Skills:

Activities for developing these skills have been reduced to reading assignments and student reporting. 

Digital Citizenship Skills:

Parents in general have reached high levels of conviction about the benefits of the use of technology in the delivery of content and personalized assistance to students.
Teachers in the secondary/highschool have acquired important skills in delivering content through social networks such as WhatsApp and Facebook; and platforms like Google Meet, Classroom, and Zoom.
In high school all teachers have been trained in the use of educational platforms. The students have already gotten used to working with these tools and have begun a journey towards their academic leveling.