- Portland-Based nonprofit Child Aid announces expanded teacher-training initiatives in response to COVID-19 crisis
- Child Aid grows its multi-lingual, educational radio programming for students in Guatemala
Portland, Oregon, January 19, 2022 — Child Aid received a $200,000 Tinker Foundation grant to expand rural Guatemala literacy programs during the pandemic’s height.
This funding allows Child Aid to successfully expand virtual teacher-training and direct student outreach efforts. The organization began these at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. As schools across Guatemala open cautiously in mid-February, Child Aid stands at the ready. With nimble teacher-training programs that cater to in-person education, virtual-only schooling and/or a hybrid model.
Child Aid’s expansion, supported by the Tinker Foundation, impacts thousands of indigenous children in remote, poverty-stricken Guatemalan Highlands villages.
As schools shuttered in Guatemala in 2019, Child Aid ramped up its virtual teacher training efforts. They began offering the program via WhatsApp and Zoom and paying for incurred data charges for teachers in its program. Child Aid trained teachers how to use technology to connect with children stuck at home and deliver quality instruction in challenging times. Child Aid also began offering educational programming directly to children through radio and online sources.
Today, our organization incorporates the best aspects of virtual and in-person learning and offers tailored educational training to Guatemalan teachers hungry to employ learning techniques that will help their students catch up after suffering more than a year away from school.
Also, Child Aid expands its training and educational offerings to Quiché, a fourth department (state). During the 2022 school year, our organization aims to use Tinker Foundation funds to:
- Run 175 teacher-training workshops for 974 teachers
- Provide approximately 6,000 individual coaching sessions for teachers
- Distribute more than 27,000 high quality, Spanish language books to schools
- Develop a library and lending program in 110 schools.
- Provide hand sanitizer and face masks to all classrooms in 110 schools.
The Problem:
Although the Guatemalan government builds primary schools and employs teachers, very little learning occurs in these schools. Primary school teachers generally have only a high school education, and they are all products of the same broken educational system in which they now work. Schools lack resources which reinforces the use of teaching methods based on rote memorization and copying from the blackboard.
On average, Guatemalans over 15 years of age have only 5.6 years of schooling. According to the Guatemalan government’s data, only 30 percent of children who stay in school until sixth grade can pass a grade appropriate reading comprehension test. The situation in the indigenous Western highlands, where Child Aid works, is far worse. Indigenous women spend, on average, only 3.4 years in school. Guatemala has one of the highest rates of illiteracy in Latin America. The pandemic has exacerbated the huge educational gap between resourced families and those living on the knife-edge of poverty.
For more information about Child Aid’s work or to arrange interviews or access photos and videos, please contact Child Aid Director of Public Relations Helyn Trickey Bradley @ 404-384-4143.
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ABOUT CHILD AID: We are a Portland-based literacy nonprofit working to bring books and comprehensive teacher training to elementary-age children in some of the poorest communities in Guatemala. To date, our organization works in 211 partner schools, reaching nearly 81,000 indigenous children with transformative education and literacy skills.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Helyn Trickey Bradley // Child Aid Communications Director // C – 404-384-4143