Break the cycle of poverty in Guatemala

Guatemala is a country with a lot to boast about. It is one of the few countries in the world where the indigenous people make up a majority of the population. It has 37 volcanoes, more than any other Central American nation, along with 300+ microclimates. It is renowned for supplying the world with high quality jade in a variety of colors—including rare lavender, blue, and black. Guatemala is also one of the world's top coffee-producing countries.

With all of that to be proud of, on the other side, Guatemala has one of the highest levels of inequality in Latin America with disparities along urban/rural, indigenous/non-indigenous, and male/female divides. One of the most notable areas of inequality is educational opportunities. Lower levels of educational opportunities, while not fully responsible for, reinforce inequalities in other areas such as economic and job opportunities, land ownership and health outcomes. Quality education is widely promoted as a powerful tool to reduce systematic inequality. Since the pandemic we have primarily focused efforts on increasing high quality educational opportunities for disadvantaged students in our community. This currently takes the shape of Montessori preschool classes for 22 students ages 3 to 6; a 3 year cycle of after school art classes which use art to teach essential school skills, history as well as geography and cultural studies (subjects almost completely absent from the current national curriculum); and most recently after school taekwondo classes. We are so glad to have your support to help our students succeed in reaching their potential despite the inequalities they face in other areas of their lives. In this report we aimed to update you on how your donations are being used in our community to provide educational opportunities for disadvantaged students. In the upcoming months, we plan to share with you the specific advances which have been made.

As always thank you for being part of our mission to break the cycle of poverty in Guatemala through education,

Best wishes,

Colleen

Greeting from our team here in Guatemala,

We hope this message finds you well. As the end of 2025 is approaching we have been reflecting on what we did good towards helping our students reach their potential and how we can do even better in 2026. This year was our first year of preschool, with 14 students ages 3 to 6 finishing out the year. This year our strengths were in art, practical life, fine motor skills, science and language and literacy. Next year, while we will continue honing those areas, our main focus will be on building up our math and English as a foreign language curriculum areas. Also, we have had so much interest in our preschool program that we will be adding an additional preschool class. This means for 2026 we will have 1 class of 12 students ages 3 and 4 years old and another class of 12 students ages 5 and 6 years old. For our older students we plan to continue our art classes as well as next year even more of our students will be receiving taekwondo through a partnership with a local Korean organization and who know what else God has in store for us next year! We wanted to take this time to thank you for being part of our team and these activities for 2025 and we hope you will continue to be a part of helping these students reach their potential in 2026.  

Best wishes and a Happy New Year,

Colleen Supanich