Volcán de Fuego, an active volcano just outside Antigua, Guatemala, began a massive eruption yesterday morning, forcing over 30,000 people to evacuate towns and villages around the mountain. Fortunately, none of the communities where we work have been severely affected, but people in towns closest to the volcano are understandably frightened. Yepocapa and Santa Rosa, […] Continue Reading

Meet Fabiola Chioc, a teacher in training at a school for indigenous women in San Andres, Guatemala. Child Aid works in partnership with Fabiola’s school to help the students learn how to teach and promote reading. Most teachers in rural Guatemala never learn the basics of how to teach children to read, which is one […] Continue Reading

Last week, 46 librarians from villages throughout the Guatemalan Highlands traveled to Antigua for Child Aid’s third group training session of the academic year. For many of the participants, attending the all-day workshop meant leaving home well before dawn and traveling by bus for several hours in order to make the 8:00am start time. Usually, […] Continue Reading

In Guatemala, children in rural areas, especially indigenous children, are in dire need of educational support. We know this not because we bury our heads in statistical reports but because we’ve spent over 18 years working at the village level with children, teachers and librarians. Day in and day out, we see firsthand just how hard it […] Continue Reading

For those of you who didn’t see the photos on our Facebook page showing the new library going up in Xojolá, Guatemala, here they are! Alejandro Guarchaj, the former school director and a member of the library committee, recently sent them to us. Last year, we helped the community convert an old abandoned building into […] Continue Reading

Carlos Pos Ben is a Child Aid literacy trainer and a native speaker of Kaqchikel, one of Guatemala’s 21 indigenous Mayan languages. He works in several remote Kaqchikel communities in Guatemala’s Central Highlands, helping undertrained teachers in neglected schools become better bilingual educators. Most of the more than 50 towns and villages where we work are […] Continue Reading

By John van Keppel, Guatemala National Director I always find it amazing to see what one motivated librarian can accomplish when provided with training, support and resources. I just returned from Patzún, Guatemala, where we recently began our Reading for Life program. Patzún is a small town in the country’s rugged Central Highlands, and most of […] Continue Reading

We believe the ability to read is both personally empowering and essential to a child’s capacity to imagine, pursue and realize a better life. Continue Reading

This is our third year of partnership with the village of Xesampual, a remote K’iché Mayan community in the department of Sololá, Guatemala. The library here has gotten so popular that that the librarian, a woman named Rosenda Yac Escún, regularly has to put tables outside to accommodate all the children who want to use […] Continue Reading

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