Support literacy and learning for 1,900 Maya youth

In this update, we’d like to share about the progress of our third-year middle school scholars who will be starting high school next January, as the preparations are starting now! Thanks to your generous contributions, we are able to provide scholars with substantial support to prepare for this transition!

In Guatemala, students entering high school choose a “career” to study and receive a specialized technical degree. To help them with this big, important decision, we recently hosted a two-part workshop series on choosing a career. The first workshop was very hands on, involving the scholars researching the different degrees they were interested in. They were able to reflect on what kind of people they are and how their personalities would fit with the types of careers they are interested in. Scholars with similar interests worked together in a group to research a kind of degree. They looked up the different schools that offered that degree, where the schools were located, and the type of personalities that fit well with the career. A highlight included youth discovering their interests in careers as nurses, electricians, and bilingual secretaries!

To provide another level of information to support their decision-making, the second part of the series was a career panel, which included people from the community who have the degrees scholars are interested in pursuing. These included accounting, medicine, computer science, bilingual secretary, physical education, electrician, and literature and sciences, which is a general college-prep degree. Our scholars had many important questions for our terrific group of panelists, such as how long it would take to complete each degree and the cost of tuition and scholarship options. Panelists shared their personal experiences including the reasons they chose their specific degree, what they liked about it, and what job opportunities exist in the Chajul area and around Guatemala for people with that degree.

We also had a special guest speaker who studied primary education in high school but decided to pursue a university degree in agricultural engineering. This was to make sure our scholars know that it’s okay if they end up changing their minds and choosing a different educational and/or career path different from their technical degree. The panelists offered very helpful advice and insight which was inspiring for scholars. One panelist offered the following wise suggestion, “Don’t choose a degree that all of your friends are choosing just so you can all study together, but rather choose one that you really enjoy and make that decision with your heart.” We know that our scholars will take to heart the advice and information provided by our terrific panelists, as well as the other knowledge they’ve gained throughout their middle school years with Limitless Horizons Ixil, to confidently make the best decisions for their next step into high school!

We are thankful for the continued support you give Limitless Horizons Ixil so that we can provide meaningful supports like these to our youth as they make important, life-changing decisions and pursue higher levels of education to achieve their professional goals. Supporters like you make their dreams into reality. Thank you.