Miguel Angel Asturias Academy
Summary
A school that provides education for more than 300 impoverished children that come from the most vulnerable sectors of society who would otherwise have no access to education.
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More Information About this Project
Project Needs and Beneficiaries
Funding for operating budget, addition of a full-time English teacher, construction of a new facility, and addition of a high school which specializes in teacher training (grades 10-12). Current students (300) and future students are the primary beneficiaries, although the school also benefits the community and serves as a model for alternative education in Guatemala.
Activities
Provide educational and technical skills to disadvantaged children in Guatemala.
Funding Information
Total Funding Received to Date: $120
Remaining Goal to be Funded: $44,880
Total Funding Goal: $45,000
Additional Documentation
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
Resources
Why this Project is Important
Potential Long Term Impact
This project helps over 300 impoverished children have access to education. As the school reaches milestone toward completing the third floor another 150 students can now attend the school.
Project Message
“Teach the children. They are the ones who will learn, and if they learn well it will change all our lives�
- Jorge Chojalan, Founder of Miguel Angel Asturias Academy
Who is Running This Project
Contact
Demetri J.M. Patitsas
Social Enterprise Generator
13 calle 24-43
Zona 3
Quetzaltenango, None
Guatemala
502 619 0778
Email:
Project Sponsor
Organization
Colegio Miguel Angel Asturias
13 calle 24-43 Zona 3
Quetzaltenango,
None
Guatemala
502 619 0778
Where this Project is Located
Country
This project is located in
Guatemala
and can also be found under
Education.
For more information about Guatemala, read the Human Development Report on Guatemala or the Wikipedia entry for Guatemala.
When this Project was Updated
Last Updated
This project was last updated on November 6, 2009.
Date Added to GlobalGiving
This project was added to the GlobalGiving project catalog on July 26, 2004
Latest Update from the Field
A postcard from Miguel Angel Asturias Academy
By Marc Maxson - Visitor, July 16, 2009 11:38 AM
During the week of May 24 to May 31, GlobalGiving colleague Robert Dubois and I visited 8 projects in Guatemala and held two workshops about media. Miguel Asturias Academy agreed to host one of the workshops. This is what we saw there.
- Walking through Miguel Asturias Academy -
The Academy was clean and quiet when we arrived, yet students filled every classroom. If you have ever visited schools in Guatemala, this is an anomaly. All over the world, noisy classrooms distract students from learning. Not so at Miguel Asturias Academy.
“Where is Miguel?” I asked Steve, our American host, workshop coordinator, and school director of development. He looked at me funny. Miguel Asturias is not the founder. Miguel Asturias was a Guatemalan Novelist and champion of indigenous peoples. The founder, Jorge, who is an Ashoka Fellow and no lightweight himself, adopted Miguel Asturias’s philosophy to education. I gather that this means empowering the Guatemalan youth through respect towards one’s native culture. As Steve explained, “we the teachers are also learners. Everyone is both.” Also, students can wear either uniforms or embroidered indigenous dress. For many years Guatemalan elites used clothing to identify and discriminate against indigenous peoples.
At break time (3:20pm), students poured out of the classrooms into the central basketball court. Some headed to the snack bar, where an old woman sold pork rinds covered in ketchup and mayonnaise, a snack I mistook for pizza at first. Girls chatted on the stairs that led to another 10 classrooms on the second floor. Wandering up, I found one student typing a document in the computer lab. No one chaperoned my wandering or supervised this student; she was using the computer simply because she wanted to. This illustrates what the school’s stated mission of “breaking the cycle of poverty through education” looks like.
I descended and joined Steve in the main courtyard among the kids watching and playing basketball. “We’ve got this basketball tournament that’s going on now,” Steve said. “We played yesterday and actually, we won. I wish you’d been here to film it.”
Ducking into a side office, I found a student reading English aloud from a laptop, getting additional help from Kate, an American volunteer teacher. This academy had (I think) four American volunteer teachers. One of them (Amanda) had arrived at the school just that day to start a summer of service. School runs through the summer at Miguel’s academy.
- Taking Literacy to new heights in Xela, Guatemala -
Steve took us to the roof, where workers were adding a third floor. “Here we are building a public library. This will be the first one in Xela.” (population: 300,000)
“Really? The first one?”
“First public one. There are a few private ones and a government one, but the door is always locked. No staff ever open it.”
This was confirmed by Paul Guggenheim of the Riecken Foundation, whose organization builds community libraries in Guatemala and Honduras. [Riecken is in the process of joining GlobalGiving this month!]
We interviewed Jorge for a short video.
Robert asked him, “in one word, what does globalgiving mean to you?”
“Apoyo,” [Help] Jorge said.
Links:
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