San Rafael’s graduates from sixth grade in 2009.

Five students graduated from sixth grade this fall in the small Guatemalan village of San Rafael. To many readers, this might seem like an everyday occasion. For those five kids, it was a major achievement, one which few in their village had achieved before.

On first glance, the beauty of San Rafael is breathtaking. The indigenous Mayan community is full of the colorful and intricate dress worn by the women and girls. Tucked into the rolling hills, the village is surrounded by a luscious, vibrant patchwork of cropland.

A CYCLE OF POVERTY

Just below the surface, however, you begin to see the depth of poverty in San Rafael. Many homes have dirt floors and cornstalk walls. Families cook indoors over open fires that cause burns and respiratory disease. Most adults work as day laborers in fields owned by large landowners, and families earn an average of $50 to $130 each month, sometimes not enough to provide three meals a day. Children, many of whom help their parents in the fields, often face pressure to leave school before sixth grade.

A home and farmland in San Rafael.

The history of San Rafael is much like other rural villages in Guatemala. The community suffered from the country’s 30-year civil war, which left more than 200,000 Guatemalans dead and one million displaced. The war formally ended with peace accords in 1994, but the residue of violence and corruption has persisted. Guatemala has long had an uneven distribution of land, with some 96 percent of producers cultivating only 20 percent of the land, and this hasn’t changed much since the end of the war. Needless to say, livable wages are hard to come by, and the cycle of low education and low pay continues for another generation.

CHANGE THROUGH EDUCATION

Common Hope has been working in Guatemala since 1986 to unwind this cycle through education. Its main goal is to help children stay in school as long as possible. If a young adult can graduate from high school, she can find a job as a professional and have a much better chance of moving beyond a paycheck to paycheck existence. After 20 years in the country, Common Hope has helped hundreds of youth graduate from high school and begin careers as medical workers, business professionals, social workers and more.

Common Hope started working in San Rafael in 2008. It chose the community for its depth of need as well as several existing community assets, including an NGO medical clinic and a public school receptive to partnering to strengthen services offered to students and families. Its work started at the elementary school, building relationships and presenting its educational model to parents and teachers.

The program works like this: families partner with Common Hope, agreeing to keep their children in school. In turn, Common Hope pays any expenses associated with education including books, schools supplies, and fees, and families gain access to the other opportunities Common Hope offers to improve their health and housing. This way, children can bring more benefits to their family in school than they can in the fields. And the longer children stay in school, the better chance they have of finding a job with a livable wage down the road.

Girls line up for a snack at the elementary school.

LONG-TERM VISION

The initial results in San Rafael have been promising. Interest in the school has risen considerably since Common Hope started bringing supplies and support to the village: a record 372 students attended school in 2009 compared to 300 students the year before, and a number of community members have pitched in to build a new classroom and expand the school lunch program.

Boys head home from school in San Rafael.Common Hope understands that transformation in San Rafael won’t happen overnight; it will be a long-term effort. The organization has done it before. Board chair Bill Huebsch has been involved with Common Hope since the early days. After visiting San Rafael last year, he reflected, “This looks just like San Pedro did when we first began working there in the 90s. A lot has changed in San Pedro since then.”

Since 1990, hundreds of students have graduated from high school in San Pedro and other surrounding Antigua communities. Common Hope has seen real change happen, and is ready to make it happen again in San Rafael. The organization is off to a promising start: elementary school attendance in San Rafael is expected to rise another 15 percent in 2010, and all five San Rafael sixth graders who graduated in 2009 plan to continue on to seventh grade next year.

Common Hope

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under NEED Magazine, Organizations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.