The past few weeks at Maya Traditions have passed in a blur. A fun blur, filled with chicken buses, presentations, and visits to communities I´d never seen.
As part of Maya Tradition´s work supporting local artisans, they provide scholarships for the weaver´s children, an invaluable means to encourage them to stay in school. Without the scholarships, many students would have to drop out and find a job to help bring in money for their family. Maya Traditions has scholarships for students from elementary school all the way to university, and over the past few weeks I´ve had the good fortune to work with their sponsored high schoolers.
Even though it´s winter here, right now it´s what we in the US would call ´summer break´ for public schools: a 2-month vacation from November into January. During this time, Maya Traditions asks its scholarship students to implement a community service project in their hometown, a means of both giving back to their community and giving the students valuable organizing experience. I attended the preparation workshop back when I first arrived in Guatemala, and now am getting to see the results.
Over the past 2 weeks, Nicolasa—FTM´s Education Program Coordinator—and I have gone out to visit the students to observe the work they´ve been doing. Some of them are in far-flung rural communities, requiring a long journey and a few different modes of transportation to reach. One particularly busy day, Nicolasa and I realized we´d used every available means of transport—navigating between 2 different isolated towns, we´d taken a chicken bus, a microbus, a pickup truck, a tuktuk and a lancha!
All the traveling has been well worth it. The community service projects—all revolving around this year´s theme, ‘Family Struggles’—show the hard work and dedication that the students have. Using games, videos, and in-depth discussions, they have worked with groups of their peers, young children, and their mothers and elders of the community to address this difficult topic. It´s been great to watch them speak honestly about the effects of poverty, violence, and drug addiction on local families has been. These conversations are so necessary to the health of the community, and watching the students facilitate them has been truly inspiring.
Today is my last day at Maya Traditions, which I cannot believe. Time has flown by so fast! It´s truly been a privilege to work with an organization that´s doing such great work. This was my first time in Guatemala, but it´s definitely not my last!
--Written by Nicole, volunteer
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