“The kids love to go to the library activities, their only complaint is they wish they could go everyday!” says ChukMuk teacher Gaspar Sapalú. Even on days when the children don’t have a scheduled library time, the books come to their classroom with “traveling suitcases,” which are full of the materials teachers need to lead literacy activities in their own classrooms. The children are also taking full advantage of our free hour each day,  where they often practice reading aloud in Spanish. Most of their parents speak only the local Mayan Tz’utujil language, so school is often the only place where they can practice their Spanish. The ability to communicate in Spanish can open many opportunities for them in the future.

This month we also organized a school-wide event that got everyone reading! To celebrate the Internacional Día Del Libro (International Day of the Book), we asked each teacher to read a story in the classroom, and then the students designed their own bookmarks based on the story they heard. At the end of the week, we selected seven winners and awarded prizes based on the children’s understanding and creative depiction of the story. Encouraging children to use their imaginations and make a story come to life stimulates their minds and fosters a love of reading!

Chacaya is a small school on the outskirts of the Santiago Atitlan. They have a limited number of supplies and a small number of teachers to work with the children. Before the supplies arrived, the classrooms were nearly bare, and educational materials were scarce. Pueblo a Pueblo’s donors have helped to transform the school into a place where children are excited to learn. During our visit, Chacaya teacher Maria Nicolasa reported that she has already seen a difference made by the school lunches provided through our School Nutrition Program. Maria told us, “It’s helping them focus better when they’re in class.” With good nutrition and educational materials, the kids are motivated and ready to learn.

Shown L to R: Chacaya student; Veronica Sunderland, Maternal Child Health Program Manger; (Mr.) Misael Ramirez Samuc, School Garden Technician; Amanda Zehner, School Health and Nutrition Program Manager

Over Semana Santa the women of Pueblo a Pueblo’s staff teamed up with their mothers, visiting from the USA, to clean up the Chacaya school garden.  The Pueblo a Pueblo garden staff, director of the Chacaya school, and a few students also joined in to get their hands dirty and help transform the garden.

Among other tasks, the team painted garden signs, created pathways with painted rocks and weeded the garden beds. The Chacaya garden is  looking great thanks to their hard work… and feminine touch!

Teachers received a manual with a variety of lesson plans related to the importance of hygiene, washing hands, and dental hygiene, as well as water-borne illnesses and how to avoid them. These activities can be adapted depending on the age of students and time available.

Teachers had a chance to create some materials for their classrooms, including a “hygiene wheel” used to monitor children’s personal hygiene on a daily basis in a fun, interactive way. The students spin an arrow on the wheel, then depending on which part of the body it falls—hair, teeth, hands, nails—the teacher and students will then inspect it and talk about how to improve their hygiene. Our next training will provide teachers with tools for how to teach students how to properly use a flush toilet, water conservation, and how to prepare and keep food clean and safe to eat.

The March theme has been “My School Subjects” with a different emphasis each week. Some of the books used in March have been:

• Math: Vamos a la Escuela (Let’s Go to School) by Matt Wolf; Doce (12) by Shanon Young
• Language: Clifford al Rescate (Clifford to the Rescue) by Norman Bridwell; ¿Qué te hace Feliz? (What Makes You Happy?) by Cricket Rohman
• Social Sciences: La Familia de Clifford (Clifford’s Family) by Norman Bridwell; Mi papa y yo (My Dad and Me) by Jesus Cervantes
• Natural Sciences: El Árbol Generoso (The Giving Tree) by Shel Silverstein; Los charcos (All Wet) by Cricket Rohman

Twenty-one Chukmuk school teachers also participated in our second teacher training, focused on the themes of developing ideas for and managing a child-friendly library.

This month we also received a generous donation from Ken and Karen Bachenberg, who sponsor a student at the Chukmuk Library. During a visit to see their daughter, Kelsey, who has been an active volunteer with Pueblo a Pueblo in Santiago Atitlan since January, they brought new story books in Spanish for the library.  We’re working to fill the library with a variety of books to stimulate curiosity and imagination in young minds. The Bachenberg’s donation is very much appreciated!

One of the many activities we carry out in our six organic
gardens is called Rain Harvesting, where we teach the children how to collect rainwater
to be used later for irrigation in the garden. All of our gardens have rain
catchment systems and the kids use watering cans to transport the water from
the holding tank to the beds. We are fill small ditches between rows of plants with
organic matter—like leaves or sawdust— and then fill them with water that
slowly filters into the beds to water the plants.

Another garden activity teaches the children why water is
important, and why they should conserve it. We demonstrate how much water
plants need to survive, and then lead the children in a discussion about how
many ways humans use water and what would happen if we no longer had it. Creating
awareness among the children about water conversation will lead to a
generational shift in how water is perceived of and used.

Pueblo a Pueblo’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)
Project covers topics related to water cleanliness. The project trains teachers
to talk to children about water borne illnesses and how to avoid them.
Activities include discussing the water cycle, identifying all the ways the
environment is contaminated that can lead to illness, and different methods for
purifying water.

This World Water Day we invite all our Pueblo a Pueblo
supporters to consider the ways you use, reuse and save water!

At our pap smear clinic

Giving out Vitamin A at our clinic this week

Together with the education outreach worker from Rxiin Tnamet, Chonita Ramirez, a local of Santiago Atitlán who has been working in this community her entire life, we were able to reach far and wide to distribute vitamins to over 60 women and children in the town of Cerro de Oro during our Vitamin A clinic! Thanks to the donations made by Vitamin Angels, we were able to provide Vitamin A and prenatal vitamins to the women and children who need it most.

Reaching out to families during our home visits

On this day that celebrates women, Pueblo a Pueblo could not be more excited to be partnering with the women in Santiago to bring hope for a healthier future!

Parents from the community breaking concrete to bury the tank.

A few weeks ago you read about the installation of a water
pump and tank at La Cumbre primary School. We are happy to report that thanks to the hard work of parents, the school now has running water in all of its bathroom facilities. The parents dug a huge ditch to place one water tank underground and then built a riser above one of the bathroom facilities into which water would be pumped, creating enough water pressure to properly flush
toilets throughout the school.

Toothbrushes wait safe and sound in their new holders.

In addition, teachers made toothbrush holders for their students to safely store the toothbrushes Pueblo a Pueblo donated. It was fun to see the teachers’ creative designs. Students are now brushing their teeth each day after snack time, keeping their teeth
clean and forming good habits for the future.

Pueblo a Pueblo recently began helping 2 other schools with WASH needs: the Tzan Chaj and Panabaj primary schools. At Tzan Chay, repairs were simple—we fixed a few spigots, drainage pipes and metal stands to keep urinals on the walls (apparently the boys like to climb up on them!). Tzan Chaj had received some support from the Ministry of Education to build new bathrooms but needed an extra push to get the job finished.

Plenty of spigots to keep little hands clean!

Panabaj Primary School was a much larger undertaking. After being transferred to a temporary school facility in 2005 after a hurricane swept through the area, the kids are finally moving back to the permanent school. However, years of abandonment and vandalism had left the bathrooms without toilets, water spigots, or working drainage systems. Pueblo a Pueblo is helping to repair the bathrooms, installing new toilets, water spigots and a water tank to ensure the bathrooms always have water.

Some of the things we take for granted every day—like toilets that flush and a place to wash your hands—are big benefits to schools in the Santiago Atitlan region.  Good hygiene can prevent the spread of deadly diseases. We are extremely thankful to our WASH donors who are helping to change habits and lives.

One of Pueblo a Pueblo's sponsored children volunteered to paint the bookshelves with us.

We’re settling in to our new location in the Chukmuk school, and the children are so excited! Every day they ask our librarian, Lidia, “When are the library activities going to start?” We assure them that activities will be starting this month, but in the meantime, we’ve been moving, cleaning, and organizing.

Throughout February we were…

• Moving the library furniture to the new location
• Packing, unpacking, and organizing six hundred new books donated and purchased with donations over the past year
• Cleaning!
  

  Library Coordinator Johanny (l) and Librarian Lidia (r) hold the first three books catalogued for the library.

• Cataloging the library’s stock with the simplified Dewey
  decimal system and a junior color code
• Expanding our “library start-up” guide so that other teachers or schools who are interested in starting a library can model our work
• Registering and updating our existing inventory of 290 books
• Painting bookshelves in cheery colors to make the library more inviting to children and also to protect the books from humidity during the rainy season
• Holding our first training for teachers and library support group members
• Starting our ongoing training for teachers and the library support group.

We're off to a great start, but we could still use about five times more books!

We’re pleased to have come so far, but also know how much more we have to do.  For example, we need to grow our library stock. International guidelines recommend a minimum of 3,000 items in library stock, including books in Spanish, educational materials, etc.) to satisfy the needs of 250 students. And we still need to furnish three separate areas of the library: the investigation area, the story area, and the creativity area. In the meantime, we’re thrilled to be in our new space, and looking forward to watching our library—and the literacy and imaginations of the children—grow and grow.

Some children in Chacaya waiting in line for their hot lunch

This year, 360 more rural children in the Santiago Atitlan region will be receiving nourishing school lunches, thanks to the generous support of Pueblo a Pueblo’s donors and funders. In addition to continuing three schools in our lunch program from 2011, this month we’re starting our hot lunch program in the schools of Tzanchaj and La Voz Atitlan.

In total, we’re now bringing nutritional, dependable meals to more than 830 primary school children every school day—and we plan to expand even further, into the Panaj school, by the end of March!

Lunchtime always brings a big smile!

These hot lunches not only keep the children attentive in class, they also provide an added incentive to send children to school in the rural communities of Santiago Atitlan, where school lunch is sometimes the children’s only healthy meal of the day. Beyond providing nourishing meals, our school lunches are part of an integrated program of ongoing education in health, nutrition, sanitation, and organic gardening that teaches the children how to stay healthier and better nourished for a lifetime, and creates long-term, sustainable changes within their communities.