Educational Materials and Equipment
Vamos Adelante provides educational materials and some school equipment to approximately 2,000 children at 5 rural schools, several of which we have partially built or restored ourselves. During the last years we have been able to reduce our number of students as the government has begun providing more support for rural schools.
Vamos Adelante provides 833 of the poorest children with basic academic scholarships. These scholarships allow these children to pay their annual registration fee, wear appropriate school clothing and shoes, and have all the required school books, pens, pencils and other materials. Several local women have also been recruited and trained as education promotoras to monitor the progress of the students for who Vamos Adelante is providing academic scholarships throughout the year. Without their scholarship, these children would otherwise not be able to attend school.
We believe it is important to work together with local authorities, and have therefore ensured that all the schools that Vamos Adelante has helped to start, build, or restore eventually become part of the regular national education system. All schools that we support, with the exception of our sister project: Informatica Amigos, have received officially-recognized governmental status.
An example of our work in education:
Thanks to Vamos Adelante the village of San Miguel Los Lotes in 1994 was able to open a primary school. When Nina, Vamos Adelante’s director, first arrived in Guatemala in 1989 her career in social work began by giving HIV prevention training to sex workers and teaching women in prison to read and write. One of her students asked her to visit the village of San Miguel Los Lotes, which had no school. Soon, Nina began teaching the children in this village to read in the street. After some time,together with the mothers of the children, Nina restored an abandoned church to use as a classroom. She taught two of the mothers (the only women who knew how to read and write) how to teach the children while she pursued assistance from government agencies. She developed a partnership with the Guatemalan government literacy agency CONALFA and in 1994 the school became officially recognized. Nina’s former Pan Am colleagues funded the school. In addition, Vamos Adelante organized special classes and a small library for those with special problems and adult literacy classes in the evening. After some years the original school became too small and thanks to donations a large property was purchased and donated to the Ministry of Education with the agreement that they would build a primary school. They did and soon the school became independent of Vamos Adelante, had ~ 170 students ( 2018)and all teachers are funded by the government. This is the school, which was destroyed on June 3rd, 2018 and will hopefully be reconstructed where the surviving families will be relocated.