Gender Equality Guatemala Project #52384

Get our Girls to Graduate!

by The Education for the Children Foundation (EFTC)

Project Report | May 26, 2022
Empowerment through Knowledge and Art

By Carolyn Meyers | Assistant to the Director

Here at the School of Hope we cannot believe how these past 4 months have flown by! Reopening has allowed us to reconnect with our students and help them recover from the trauma and losses of the pandemic. Since they have returned we have been testing our students academically as well as psychologically to see how the pandemic has affected them in order to change our methodologies to deal with the impact. Specifically, this has made a significant difference for the girls within our program.

Now that we are back at school the girls have access to psychological and academic assistance but also to critical sex education. At the School of Hope we fully support providing students with the information they need in order to make knowledgeable decisions related to sex that will impact their lives as well as providing them with the necessary tools and materials to navigate these decisions safely.

Sex education has been an essential part of the School of Hope since 2008. We have worked with ALAS (WINGS), a nonprofit organization in Guatemala that provides sexual education workshops, and have incorporated sexual education into our school curriculum for students 7th-9th grade. These workshops and curriculum are critical to lowering rates of teenage pregnancy which are a significant barrier to girls graduating from high school.

This year we have also had the privilege of partnering with a new organization, known as El Nido, who invited us to collaborate with them on Project Dandelion. Project Dandelion is a workshop specifically designed to empower young women by learning comprehensive sex education through the perspective of their rights as human beings, reproductive rights, introspection, knowledge of their own bodies and types of violence, etc. El Nido believes that sex education is the key for young women to reclaim their bodies and art is the tool to recover their voices and break the silence. Their work focuses on counteracting the negative effects that the pandemic has had on the sexuality of young women and how sexuality has been reduced to procreation enforced through silence as well as physical, sexual, and psychological violence. 14 of our students participated in 10 workshops and painted a mural at the school in the last two session that expressed values such as sisterhood, respect, and love as well as various themes such as nature, sports, and sexual diversity.

We hope to collaborate with El Nido again soon to bring their message to more of our girls!

Links:

Permalink

Jan 27, 2022
Preparing for the Future

By Carolyn Meyers | Assistant to the Director

Hello and welcome to the beginning of the 2022 school year at EFTC. This month we have been very busy preparing to open the school with our hybrid model. Using this model, all of our students will be able to attend school in small groups in order to keep them safe and healthy while also completing integrated projects at home in order to put into practice what they are learning. We feel it is very important for our students to be able to attend school in person because we know they will learn much better, that they are in desperate need of social connection, and that the School of Hope is much more than their education; it is their refuge and they are excited to return. Most importantly, EFTC knows it can return students to classes safely.

Additionally, at school students can focus solely on their education rather than being distracted by their household responsibilities. For example, during these years of remote learning, girls carried the brunt of the responsibility of managing the home while parents were away and cooked for their siblings as they were no longer receiving school meals. They also had to help younger siblings do their homework packets, often sacrificing their own education in the process. In addition to our School of Hope students returning to daily classes, we have also installed computer labs for our high school students in order to provide spaces where they can learn without the distractions and responsibilities of their household.

During 2021, we continued to support the girls within our program in a myriad of ways. We implemented an entrepreneurship program which focused on helping young women in our program, primarily single moms, start their own small businesses in order to earn an income without sacrificing their education. Ten young women were trained on hair cutting and nail art, several of the participants have built up a clientele and now have a steady income because of this program.

Furthermore, with funding from Project Apoyo we started an entrepreneurship program. Two young women from our program, Kimberly and Guadalupe, piloted this program and began their own fashion design and crepe delivery businesses. These projects helped them get by during the most difficult months of the pandemic when they needed to creatively generate an income after suffering from long periods of unemployment. We are excited to continue hosting such events and in the future and growing the entrepreneurial spirit of our girls.

A lot has changed in these past years but our dedication to helping our girls pursue their education and the future of their choosing is as strong as ever.

Links:

Permalink

Sep 29, 2021
Entering the final unit of 2021

By Jennifer McCallum | Assistant to the Director

Here at EFTC all of our students have finished their 3rd unit of the 2021 school year and are entering their final unit. This is a crucial time, this is true every academic year however, more so now than ever before. All of our students have been virtual (or occasionally partly hybrid/in-person) due to continued government restrictions on Education in Guatemala.

Learning from home disproportionately affects young women as they often take on work in the house, caring for younger siblings and other household responsibilities. They have to juggle these aspects with continuing their education from a distance. Here at EFTC we are working with all of our students so that they can have the individualised support they need to succeed.

Although formal classes are currently highly restricted we have the ability as a Foundation to provide in-person support in other departments in covid-safe ways. We therefore have continued with i-person therapy when necessary, many workshops on education guidance, sexual health and general / mental health. As well as periodical meetings with students and their parents when a review of their progress or motivation is required.

We were also able to organise a "Saturday School" for older students, where teachers were recruited from local high schools and taught math, physics, accounting and computer science as those were the largest areas of need for our students. These specialised tutoring sessions and classes ran over the 12 weeks, with students attending 4 hours every weekend, so each topic was covered every week..

A huge community grew out of this Saturday School initiative. Not only was the education of these students directly supported but many more students found an extra connection to EFTC, their friends and their peers after almost a year of learning in isolation. Many of our staff visited on their own time just to see the students and classrooms being used one again!

As we enter this 4th unit we are working hard to adapt to not only the changing circumstances in Guatemala but also the changing needs of each student to ensure they succeed, academically and personally!

We are so excited to see all of these young women succeeding and continuing to grow despite the challenges in front of them.

Links:

Permalink

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.