Spring Break!

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to let you know that blog updates on this particular page may decrease this month... but don't you worry. We've got four awesome groups coming from universities in the States to spend a week with us in Chaquijyá:

Vanderbilt - March 2-9
UGA & UNC - March 10-17
UAB - March 17-24

The great thing is, you're going to hear about their experiences straight from them! If you notice at the top of the blog, there are tabs with each university's name on it. We will have a couple of them post almost every day of their stay here, so be sure to check back daily for updates on their projects, culture shock, and exciting adventures.

To give you a brief introduction to what's going down this month:

Vanderbilt will be helping us re-launch a community garden in Cooperativa, working alongside a local organization named CEIBA. They will spend two days in the garden and two days giving nutrition charlas in each of our primary schools.

UGA and UNC will be doing Bottle School related work. Unfortunately, since the bottle school is yet unfinished, they will no longer be painting the new addition as planned. Instead, Esteban is putting them to work on painting other classrooms of the school. Each of the groups will spend two days painting. On the other two days, they will be doing recycled art projects with the kids! We will be making toothbrush/toothpaste holders out of recycled plastic bottles...

Which leads us to UAB! UAB will be providing students with fluoride, toothbrushes, and toothpaste. Along with providing these materials, they will also be leading dental workshops.  However, we will be doing this in FOUR of the neighborhoods of Chaquijyá! We are super excited to be expanding our reach to Yaxon and Xibalby for this project. We just met with the director of Yaxon Primaria today (his name is Juan), and he was extremely nice and well-organized. I'm glad that we will able to work with him and his students.

As you can see, we are putting these college kids to work! I'm so excited for all of the projects we are doing with each of these groups. It's even more encouraging to see how they all somewhat relate to each other. Recently, Jess posted about Escuelas Saludables, which is a certification we are trying to help Cooperativa and Central Primarias to achieve. All of these projects ultimately help us in attaining this certification at both schools. As Jess mentioned, the community garden will help students (and the community) learn more about leading a nutritious lifestyle. The recycled art programs (albeit, temporarily) aid with trash disposal. Furthermore, the toothbrush holders will be perfect for the toothbrushes and toothpaste the students receive the following week... which is also a requirement for Escuelas Saludables. Each student must have these items at school and use them each day after snack.

Not only do our college Spring Breakers have the opportunity to volunteer their time on cool short-term projects, but all of them contribute to one of the larger programmatic goals of our organization: the Escuelas Saludables certification. I'd like to say that Ja & I planned it this way on purpose... but I think sometimes things just happen work out for the best. :)

So, here's to Spring Break! We thank you in advance for all the help you're giving us, and we look forward to making some great memories together. See you soon!

-Nicole

Escuelas Saludables!

Today Nicole, Julie and I attended an “escuelas saludables” (healthy schools) event in San Marcos La Laguna.  The initiative, led by the Ministry of Education as well as a network of twenty NGOs and local community-based organizations, aims to certify schools across Guatemala as “healthy schools” based on specific criteria including sufficient education surrounding nutrition and hygienic practices, environmental appreciation, the implementation of recycling, composting and proper trash disposal as well as adequate infrastructure, among other things.  Today’s event was a chance for the network of people and organizations working toward this goal to come together, celebrate the project, and receive the official healthy schools manual which provides relevant information regarding the purpose of the initiative as well as what the schools can do to reach this goal.  These manuals will be distributed to every teacher working at a school which is part of the project. 

A pannel of important leaders shared a few words about the importance Escuelas Saludables.

Here's all the organizations involved in this initiative! Notice MPI in the third column :)

Many of the organizations set up tables so we could learn about one another.

I learned about the initiative a few months ago from a friend who works with the Mancomunidad La Laguna, an association of governmental and non-governmental people and resources around Lake Atitlan who work to improve environmental, health and economic conditions of surrounding communities.  Luckily we made this connection in order to become part of the initiative, because otherwise it can be difficult for schools from rural communities to gain access and information to such projects. 

This past week Nicole and Julie began the first step of the process by administering a diagnosis of the two primary schools we work with in Central and Cooperativa.  Once the diagnosis has been analyzed, we will be able to see what gaps exist in the school’s current activities, resources and infrastructure in order for them to meet the criteria of a healthy school.  From there we can begin planning how to support the schools to reach the certification by implementing more health programs, seeking outside funding and collaborating with other organizations to create access to a healthy school and environment for the schoolchildren and teachers of Chaquijyá. 

The first project we will be working on which relates directly to the initiative is creating a community garden for the school of Cooperativa.  We have made contact with another local NGO, Ceiba, who has already been planning to create a community garden for the school in Cooperativa.  Our first Spring break group, Vanderbilt, will be working side by side with Ceiba and students from the Cooperativa school to begin creating a garden which can eventually be used to teach schoolchildren about nutrition.  It’s amazing to see how interconnected our efforts and goals are with other local NGOs and the government, and as we know, working together we are able to accomplish so much more.  

-Jess