In 2023, Child Aid piloted a new after-school program – Guatemalan Girls: The Value of our Voices (VOV) in two Guatemalan elementary schools. Our aim is to encourage female students to stay in school longer and feel more confident participating in classroom activities. Our new program encourages students to reflect on their identities as indigenous women and explore the power of their voices.
Child Aid leads discussions with the students about the importance of critical thinking in their own decision making, and the girls read books about the impact powerful women are having across the globe. Word spread quickly, and girls in many of our schools asked for the after-school program in their schools, too. Today, Nearly 400 girls participate in 24 VOV clubs in Child Aid schools. The demand by female students for this kind of supplemental education says it all. There’s a palpable hunger for fact-based information, supplemental reading and historical understanding of women’s enormous contributions to our world.