Help School fight Climate Change w/ Green Building

Long Way Home is pleased to announce that we have been granted permission to open a new school by the Guatemalan Ministry of Education!  After several months of hard work to get the appropriate stamps from the health center, the Department of the Environment and other official seals of approval, we submitted a 400+ page application and, as of this week, Centro Educativo Técnico Chixot is official!  Lars Battle, LWH Community Development Liaison, led the charge and performed the majority of the work to make this possible.  We'd also like to extend our gratitude to our neighbor Feliciano Peren, our local education authority Edgar Simon Icú and our regional education authority Rómulo Xicay Ajuchan for their guidance and hard work during this process.  We will retain all of our local teachers in the 2014 academic year and hope to add at least one more local teacher, hire a new local director and add the sixth grade.  We are thrilled to have achieved this milestone and are now one step closer to having a self-sufficient school in San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala!

The 2013 school year ended this month and boy, did our students go out with a bang!  October 1st was Children's Day in Guatemala.  Our students celebrated by participating in a trash art competition.  Students from all grade levels crafted boats, picture frames, aluminum cars and other awesome objects from "waste" materials they found in their homes.  The winner, 5th grader Yovani, made a chair out of 75 plastic bottles.  Although a bit small, it can hold an adult's weight and is super durable.  On the last day of school, the 4th and 5th graders hosted an exhibition of all the things they'd made from trash in their art class.  Toothbrush holders, chip bag wallets and egg baskets were just some of the awesome crafts the kiddos displayed.

In construction news, we are spending the next few months putting the finishing touches on our three earthbag primary school classrooms.  As the rainy season winds down, earthen finish work speeds up.  Our finishes are drying more swiftly and we don't have to spend nearly so much time tarping the buildings to protect them from late afternoon deluges.  As usual, we are crafting earthen art to adorn the walls of the classrooms.  For our first dome, we are featuring forest animals and vegetations.  So far we have a jaguar, a deer, a family of owls and several trees.  We are thinking of doing an ocean theme for the second dome.  As our finishing materials can be easily molded into most any form, we love to take advantage of the opportunity to add art where ever we can.

We sincerely appreciate your continued support of our school project.  Without generous donations of time and money, we would not be celebrating the end of a successful second school year and the beginning of a whole new school experience for the youth in our rural, indigenous town.  A million times thank you!

Links:

• Long Way Home website
• Long Way Home on Facebook