By Colleen Supanich | Project Leader
Machismo is the social construction of gender roles which asserts that males are superior and dominant to females. In Guatemala, machismo prevents both our female and male students from reaching their full potential in various ways. For example, it is common for female students to have diffculties speaking up in a group or even responding to questions such as what is their name when asked. It is also common for male students to perceive preparing and serving meals and washing the dishes and cleaning up as the work of females. One of our pillar beliefs is that all students, both male and female, have the right to learn the skills they need to be independent. Part of that independence includes learning how to maintain one's own personal hygiene, how to grow one's own food, how to prepare our own meals, how to serve ourselves and others, and how to clean up after ourselves and organize and tidy up our environment. We work on building these essential life skills with the students in our Saturday Montessori program. We have a mixed team with 4 female teachers and 4 male teachers. We offer horticulture, traditionally a skill only learned by males, to both our male and female students taught by a female teacher. And all of our students, both male and female, learn to prepare their snack, wash their dishes and clean up their space after eating as well as all of our students participate in cleaning the work areas at the end of each Saturday session, Our hope with these activities is to break with community schemas which can impair students and prevent them from reaching their full potential and empower them with skills so that they may become independent adults. We thank you for your donation to this great program and hope that you will consider continued support so that we may continue to bring these opportunities to our students. In addition to photos, we have attached our newsletter for June and July to outline some of the ways we have used your donations to serve the students in our programs.
Thank so much for reading and for your support,
Colleen
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