Thank you Dodo and Albert

I came back to Mercedes at the end of July. Nature welcomed me in full. The bridge was under water so no transportation was passing between Telemán and Mercedes. I had to cross about 1km of water by foot with a part of the road on boat! There was no water and electricity at home. During the next days I was fighting with ants nest in the fridge and scorpions nest above my bad. But the hardest thing to handle was silence in the house. Dodo left at the beginning of June and Albert at the beginning of July. So there is no noise in the morning, no one is leaving belongings all over the house, no one to thank for delicious food, no one to watch a strange movie with. Apart from the fact that I have to do all the projects by myself, I cannot even discuss how it was, what should/could be done. It was good to have you guys here.

Below few photos of you work that say all that should be said:

BIG THANK YOU for the time spent together and your involvement in the project! 

Lester – story about hope, progress, stubbornness and love :)

I met Lester in October.

He is around 7-9 years old. He was speaking almost no Spanish and because of his behavior I had the impression that he barely understands any of my words as he was basically not following my words. He wasn’t close with others kids. They were hitting him or he was hitting them. I was working with him individually during literacy classes during summer. He was coming but couldn’t read, we were working with vowels at the beginning as consonants were too difficult for him. Sometimes he was looking at me guessing the letters “a”, “e”, “i”, when the letter was “u”. 

I noticed that it’s difficult for him to concentrate and he was getting bored quickly saying “no quiero”. I didn’t know why.. There was a theory that he’s a bit retarded. This theory was easy to be proven as he was following absolutely no rules, sometimes he was just standing up and leaving or punching other kids or jumping with punching “karate style”, shouting etc. I decided to give him patience and appreciation of any results. 

The second one was a simple “bien” or “muy bien” and after a day of hard work I was always telling him what a great job he did that day. I saw this twinkle in his eyes, he was proud. Some days he was the only one in the class, while others were playing outside. What I like the most in this kid is that he doesn’t care about what others do or think. 

He says and does what he thinks, answers questions, is not afraid to speak, even if sometimes he is talking about a totally different issue. He wants to come and learn and he simply does it. And when he doesn’t want it anymore he communicates it and leaves. Coming back to the story, already in October and November he was progressing incredibly from day to day, learned all the vowels, some consonants, simple words, started speaking some Spanish so that we could communicate. In January Lester started first grade, with Marta, in my opinion the best teacher in local school, who speaks only Spanish with kids. It’s June, Lester comes to our classes almost every day. He speaks, asks questions, answers in Spanish, follows instructions. He knows almost all the letters and during literacy classes is the first to take a book and read. He masses up some letters but has this incredible motivation to start again and again. He wants to read and puts a lot of effort to achieve it every time there is something to read.

Once during literacy classes children were drawing objects from the story I was reading. Lester that day draw 4 pictures of his own story and told us the story in Spanish. It was about a girl and a boy who were in love. She was kidnapped by a bad man with helicopter and saved by the soldiers of her man. I was so happy both for listening to his creative story and his new vocabulary ;).

Now Lester is coming for our classes saying “yo quiero” to whatever we do. Sometimes I take a piece of paper and want to do easier things with him, as most of the kids are from 2^nd of 3^rd grade, going back to practice letters that are difficult for him, but he wants to read books so stubbornly that I let him doing mistakes and try.

It’s not only about reading. Last time he came for math classes when we were doing roman numbers with 3^rd and 4^th grade kids. It was obviously not on his level as he knows counting till 20 since 2 months.. But he loved it, got it very quickly and was doing it sometimes better than 4^th grade students! I was soooooo proud of him!

His behavior changed. He’s less violent, sometimes gets sad or does his “karate” but is not punching others without reason.

From my point of view this kid made a huge progress, in Spanish, reading, writing, math, understanding, expressing, communication, behavior. For sure there were many different conditions that helped him achieve this. I’m sure Marta as his teacher and Li Ch’utam’s activities are important once, with the most important his own motivation. Being a volunteer in Li Ch’utam many times I ask myself why am I here, am I actually doing something good here, can I influence people here in a positive way, leave something in them that will serve them in the future?

Two days ago during our classes kids were to draw and write names of the objects that can be found at home. There were around 10 children in the class, from 1^st to 6^th grade. Most of the kids had 8-12 objects. Lester had the biggest number - 20. Some of them with the names terribly written. But watching him repeating the word “tijeras” 30 times to be able to catch the letters was simply beautiful! After that he helped me organize Li Ch’utam materials and clean the floor.

A child alone cannot develop, but if you give him a chance to do it, he will, and Lester is a prove for it. I love this kid! And even if he is the only one whom I’ve influenced a bit during my stay here – it was worth! 

Update after 3 months

During the last 3 months many things happened in the village and in Li Ch’utam.

Anna got selected for a different project and left at the beginning of March so there are just 3 of us here in the village: Albert, Dodo and me. In March the weather changed and the heat makes us working slower than before. Adding health problems of some team members the work slowed down much below European standards J. However all the projects planned for 2014 started and we are in the constant evaluation process.

Primary school

School utilities arrived at the beginning of April (almost 3 months from the beginning of classes) and school classes start looking friendlier. Our cooperation with teachers is getting better. Each of us is supporting its teacher/s at least once a week – I do literacy classes, including interpretation of pictures and getting familiar with the book and introducing music to sports classes with first grade students, Albert is helping with 7 second grade kids who still cannot read and Dodo is supporting reading classes of 3^rd and 6^th grade.

We continue after school activities, focusing mainly on literature, trying different methods or teaching how to read but also how to understand the text and interpret. 

Unfortunately books are in terrible condition. I even wrote a story about a broken book who was crying so that they understand that they should take care of books but it seems it didn’t help. And it’s not just about Li Ch’utam books, schools books are even worse threaten. And another thing is that these 40-60 books we use all the time kids know by heart, would be great to have some new once.. With Spanish and mathematics we try to use games and practice the knowledge kids got during morning classes. Once a week kids learn using computers and Friday is always art and sport day.

Secondary school

Computer classes are going very well. We already did 8 hours of computer course for 4 groups, all together 36 students. They are familiar with history of information technology, can use the basics of computers and are learning typing. Next course in the coming week.

We continue with homework help for our students and English classes for La Constancia students.

We have noticed that secondary school students come to our house to do homework or to learn English or for whatever they need but they are not involved in Li Ch’utam’s activities. Hopefully within few weeks we can finally organize an event for them to connect our work with the community and its needs.

Adults activities

In March we have started vegetable garden project for women from the village. There are 15 women involved in the project. Our master of harvesting is Edwin, our local fourth volunteer J, agriculture engineer working on the plantation in Mercedes. On the first meeting of the project we have explained how to grow vegetables: how to prepare land, how to plant, how to take care of the plants and how to harvest them. During the second meeting we already had seeds and there was planting presentation. After that each family had to plant their seeds. 

After few weeks we visited each garden with all participants giving advices on how to improve the crops. 

All the participant are very much involved and are taking care of their vegetables, sometimes they are coming to our house asking for more seeds. And are already eating their first vegetables!!!

Between volunteers we have already been discussing that we still miss men from the village in our activities and that makes it more difficult for us to understand the community. Few men who are our friends here wanted us to organize computer course for them. I hope that with 4 volunteers on board we can come back to this idea.

Current situation and 2014 plans

2014 started with planning of the projects we want to run this year. There are few we start now and others we plan to start within next weeks of months.

Primary school: classes at school started 12 days after the date when they should have been started. The government did not sent utilities for kids on time, actually they did not send it yet and no one knows when this happens. There was a meeting, teachers with parents to buy the most needed utilities to start school classes. Some parents bought them and send kids to school, others didn’t (because of lack of money on the second half of January). So on the 4^th of February (the school should start on the 16^th of January) there are half of students at classes and teachers say they cannot actually start teaching the material from the grade as other kids might have problems later. So they are repeating the material from last year or just let kids go at 10 (instead of 12:30), some days teachers just don’t come. One of the teachers changed the place of work on Monday and now he will be working in Telemán. That means that there are 5 teachers for 6 grades + pre-primary school so third and sixth grade have the same teacher and 4^th and 5^th grade have the same teacher. Apart from the teachers not coming to school, these kids will have it even more difficult. That’s the primary education situation in the village and in Guatemala..

The main objective of Li Ch’utam is to support education, especially primary education in Nueva Mercedes so we already had a meeting with teachers to discuss how can we support them. Each of us will be working with one-two teachers, supporting them with preparation of their school activities if the require it, being present at some hours/days if needed and preparing and running after school activities according to kids needs, teachers activities and Guatemalan curriculum. So far now we managed to talk to each teacher and they only tell us that they cannot actually start teaching and don’t know the needs of each kid as they have less than a half of students subscribed.. Anyway we know more or less what material they will give in the next weeks and according to that we prepare our afternoon classes that will start this Thursday. Tomorrow Li Ch’utam meets with all the parents to present our plans, especially concerning primary education, afternoon activities at school but also talk about other projects.

Cooperation with secondary school in La Constancia: as I wrote before, this year there is a new secondary school in La Constancia, around 3km from Mercedes. Finally there are 12 young people attending this school from La Ceiba and Nueva Mercedes, 5 girls and 7 boys! 6 of them receives scholarships from Li Ch’utam. The teachers there are very motivated and students are satisfied with classes, explication and all the activities done at school. The teachers are also willing to cooperate with us, using the unique competencies of Li Ch’utam – technology and foreign volunteers. That’s why we will do computer literacy and typing course and we will be supporting the teacher preparing and assisting during English classes for all students from the first grade. English classes started today. Great job Anna!

Li Ch’utam also supports the secondary school students in homework preparation twice a week. They can come if they need any materials or explanation.

Apart from the scholarships Li Ch’utam decided to organize the transportation for secondary school students. Finally there are 38 students from Nueva Mercedes, La Ceiba, Los Recuerdos, Semahu y La Constancia que van a las escuelas en La Constancia y Telemán. Every day at 12:30 pick-up takes them to school and picks them up at 18:30 starting from Telemán.

Adults education: This month we are going to start first of the workshops for adults, mainly women, about growing vegetables. We count  on their presence and active participation in the project!

Time to start 2014!

Li Ch’utam is in Nueva Mercedes with full volunteers team for the next months: Albert, Anna, Dodo and Ewa.

“I arrived in Nueva Mercedes on the 13^th of January. Reality here is so different from what most people are customized. However, despite the cultural differences, being here alters your perspective of the world. It opens your mind and makes you realize the broader framework that this world functions under. It is a life-changing experience, which cultivates your humanity and develops your sense of fulfillment.”

                                                                                  Anna

“After three weeks in Nueva Mercedes I can say that we have a lot of work here. During this period of time we had been planning all the projects that we want to do in the area. The situation here is really hard and the only mission that we have here is to bring some opportunities or facilities to people. I hope that we can leave a good impression to the local people about Li Ch’utam after our period here.”

                                                                                  Albert

Last weeks we’ve spent on getting to know the village, people, meeting with different groups and planning our activities. Some projects already started, other are still in planning phase. Stay tuned for more information soon!

Dreams come true for Christmas

Last weeks were all about scholarship programme.

There was a meeting for all the families who subscribed or wanted to subscribe their young kids to high school. The criteria were: willingness to study, involvement in Li Ch’utam activities, poor family resources making studying impossible. The applicants had to fill in the questionnaire with questions such as: why do you want to continue studying, what do you plan to do in 5 years, why do you apply for Li Ch’utam scholarship, how do you want to be involved in Li Ch’utam, how can Li Ch’utam support you apart from the scholarship. They also had to do the year budget for the scholarship. 
(on the pictures you can see the applicants working on their applications)

During the application process it turned out that 2 out of 7 applicants don’t really speak Spanish on the communicative level, other 2 understand but speak rather basic. That makes me think how is it possible that teachers let them graduate 6^th grade of primary school (all the classes are in Spanish) if they cannot communicate in Spanish.. I suppose they let them pass because they know that they didn’t make any effort during the year to really teach them.

The next step was an interview with the families to get to know their financial situation, so they were asked about fixed job and other family incomes, number of kids, why parents want the applicant to study and how do they see studying with home tasks.

Thanks to BALEU S.A. we could finally give 3 scholarships and not 2. After reviewing the situation of each family it turned out that there is only one family that has no resources to support the secondary education (no fixed job, many kids) and others live with limited but rather stable income. 

So the final decision was to give one full scholarship and the rest was divided between the other 6 young people. In this way we can support them all according to the needs they have. Apart from financial support Li Ch’utam wants to support them with activities like computer classes, typing, English etc. Celia, Devora, Fidencio, Israel, Julio, Rony and Otto will be studying starting from January with Li Ch’utam support. You should have seen the faces of the kids and their families when I was informing them about the decision. They were so grateful that someone is supporting them in their kids education. I think that’s the best present I have ever given to anyone for Christmas J. Do you remember when I wrote few months ago about the young girl who wants to study but her family has no money for it? She will receive the scholarship - dreams come true for Christmas :)

Marry Christmas!

Understanding the community

Communication with the community is progressing. Visits of each house were taking too long and were not possible because of lack of time and translation resources (because of activities with kids we could have run them only on Monday and Friday morning and not always on these days we had people to translate). So the strategy changed. We had meetings with  COCODE's from both communities (Nueva Mercedes and La Ceiba) and after that we had meetings with people (women mainly) from both communities. At each meeting we had around 10-15 people (instead of 50) but the meetings were very effective. We asked about what people think about Li Ch'utam's work in the community, we were discussing the activities we run with primary school kids and it turned out that some of the families didn't know much about Li Ch'utam or about our activities. Since then we have few new kids coming for our classes. We also discussed the high school education possibilities, costs and possible transportation options. The most interesting part for the women were of course the activities with adults. All the participants (20 women) were very enthusiastic about all our ideas and subscribed for all of them. They had also some new ideas like bread and soap making. It seems like 2014 will be a busy year :).

Secondary education

In the past year there were 5 kids attending high school in Telemán out of which only one girl (for around 20 at the age of high school). I was talking to another girl who did one year of high school but did not get promotion and was not studying last year. She said that she was not studying because her younger brother started to study and the family didn’t have money for her education. She really wants to study and because of a big promotion and Li Ch’utam’s involvement in secondary education her parents decided to subscribe her to start school from January again. She said however that one day her father says that she can continue education and another day he says that there is no reason for it as he has no secondary education and has nice job and above all she’s a woman so what for does she need to study. Her brother says that it’s a waist of money to put her studying. I’m not surprised she didn’t pass the year with such support from her family..

So the subscription to high school was the hottest topic during the last weeks.

First the transportation to Telemán was organized for a reduced price. The previous volunteers discovered that people don’t send their kids to high school because the cost of transportation is too high and the road not secure. It was agreed with one driver that he takes each day high school kids at a specific hour and brings them back after classes. It was to be an exclusive transportation (and the secure one) for high school kids and for certain amount of money to be paid each way no matter how many kids are going. The price reduced from 5Q to 3,75Q each way with at least 20 kids. However after that we received the information that there will be high school in La Constancia which is a closer village, much better and cheaper option for people in the village. The cost of transportation is 2Q each. The cost of school is much lover as well, so the total cost would be around 150Q per month comparing to more than 400Q per month in Telemán. Li Ch'utam helped people to get more information about conditions to encourage them to subscribe. We wanted also to organize the secure transportation on a reduced price to La Constancia instead of Telemán. Counting with 20 out of 27 at the age of high school only 10 were really interested and were attending the meetings. Finally only 7 subscribed to La Constancia and maybe 2-3 will go to Telemán. Only one family asked for financial support. The transportation to La Constancia will not be organized as there are not enough kids. I was very surprised that less than a half of families attended the meetings about high school. So I started talking to these young people if they are going to subscribe and why didn’t their families attend the meetings. Some of them said that they don’t want to study. So it seems that the problem is not security, lack of money or distance but people's (both kids and parents) willingness. Now I feel like it’s worth to focus on those who really want to study, support them financially or in any other way to make them examples for the community and encourage more kids to study next years. Li Ch’utam decided to give 2 scholarships this year to those who could not study without our support. I hope all this will make the families think about their kids education.

Books

One of the previous volunteers suggested that it would be nice to run a study to understand the life of the community better. There are moments when I see the need of such a study as some situations are so much NOT logical for me that it’s difficult to accept them.

Few months ago the school received many (around 200) books from the Ministry of Education. They were supposed to be used during the first half an hour (7:30-8:00) every day during school year so that kids can progress in reading. As the teachers never came at 7:300 the books were not used. During summer activities we do literacy classes and the kids read almost all of the books we have (around 40) so I asked the director if Li Ch’utam could use the school books. He said that during holidays he is not a director but as he was responsible for the books before he put them all in boxes and there is a list and nothing can be lost so Li Ch’utam cannot use them during holidays. So the books were not used during school term (as they arrived late and teachers didn’t want to come for this half an hour reading) and cannot be used during holidays because have to be in the boxes. That’s how the resources (limited indeed) are used effectively..

Electricity

Before the holiday started I was informed that the invoice of the school electricity was not paid and it’s possible that during holidays there will be no electricity in school. That would disturb our classes a lot as we run 2 hours computer classes twice a week and use computers also during other activities. I even offered help in electricity bill payment. The director assured me that it will be done by the Parents Committee and I don’t have to worry about it. Luckily there was electricity from the beginning of holidays so I though it’s done. Two weeks ago we were connecting computer and speakers for the movie we always put on Wednesday and the discovered that there is no electricity at school. Next day I talked to the director and he said that the bill was to be paid that day and from the next day we can use electricity. Of course next day there was no electricity so Friday computer classes were cancelled. However I was very positively surprised because on Monday morning the electricity was there and in the afternoon I had computer classes with kids. That proves that IT IS possible here to manage the situation “quite” quickly! J Why to wait until the electricity is cut off..?

Loneliness means being closer to people

I forgot to mention hat since 10 days I’m alone in the house. Quite an interesting experience how to overcome fear at night and another prove that getting used to new situation is just a matter of time. I also feel a bit closer to the community, watching local football championship with them, talking to people I meet in the village more than before, getting a lot of information from Celia, Devora and Waldemar and learning Q’eqchi. J It’s somehow different to be alone here than with other volunteers but I’m really looking forward to mid January to have more people onboard.