Thirty student teachers are leaving Guatemala City today. They are heading to their remote home towns and villages throughout Guatemala. The students are participants in Child Aid’s Reading for Life program. They will lead a six-week reading program for children in their home communities.
“We’ve been working with these young teachers-to-be for a year now,” says Child Aid’s Country Director, John van Keppel, “and they’re excited to apply their new skills as reading promoters in their home towns.”
Child Aid is currently training more than 240 young men and women. All of them indigenous Mayas, to teach and promote reading in rural areas. These students come from some of Guatemala’s poorest communities, where struggle and hardship are the norm. One student, a young man named Andres Rolando Choc, will be returning to Panzós. An indigenous town in the department of Alta Verapaz. Panzós was deeply affected by Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, which ended only 16 years ago. It was the site of one of the country’s most brutal massacres during the war. Life there is difficult, jobs are few, and most children drop out of school early. Even today, books in Panzós are rare.
Andres will bring 50 children’s books home with him and lead Child Aid’s Adventures in Reading program during Guatemala’s three-month school break. Through the program, Andres will work with local children who have little access to reading materials. His goal is to introduce them to storybooks and the joy of reading. By sparking their interest, encouraging reading, and providing books, he increases the chances they’ll become readers early in life. That’s particularly important to Andres, who will soon become a certified teacher.
“I went to school with no books,” says Andres, “and I want kids in my town to learn about them while they’re little. These books are colorful and full of stories, which will be exciting for them.”
If he returns to a village where kids are excited by books, have been read to as children, and have access to books, his job, as a teacher, will be a lot easier.