Aula Mágica Guatemala 2021 Report

Work completed during the year 2021

Esteemed and dear friends,

In these changing times for everyone, we hope that each of you and your families are healthy and that you can somehow continue with your daily activities according to the possibilities allowed.

In our country Guatemala every day is a challenge, many families are of low income and do not have a job or stable income to cover basic costs. This has increased considerably as a result of the pandemic. Despite the difficulties, we continue to work. Day by day, we look for strategies to support our children in their preschool education. It has not been easy, but through dedication and hard work, we have been able to finish another year with great success.

We are very proud of each of the members of our work team. They have demonstrated their vocation of serving their communities through the attention they give to every kid.

During this year, we served more than 435 preschool children, each one of our children received their nutritional supplement "Chispuditos", we evaluated the children academically and anthropometrically, we had the opportunity to support our Facilitators with food, and each one of them received a stipend during the 12 months. Besides, this year we added new activities to our program: we planted more than 500 trees with our children, allowing us to teach them to take care of our planet. Also, this year we worked with our vacation school for the first time!

We invite you to explore this report and the most relevant things we did this year!

We are deeply grateful for your continued support!

With gratitude,

Aula Mágica Guatemala

All that we accomplished during the year was possible thanks to all of you: Miracles In Action, Go Philanthropic, The Mathile Institute, Project Quetzal, MAIA, Go Campaign, Let Hope Begin Guatemala, Reed Family, and individual friends. Global Giving and all those who made donations through them during the year. Volunteer: Cristina: social networks and Managing the website, volunteer translators: Drew and Bryan. Volunteer: Statistical documents: Laura and Pilar.

We present you the most outstanding activities that we have accomplished during 2021

January

In order to prepare the way we would work depending on the pandemic, we started the year by organizing our work team.

Taking into account all the safety and hygiene measures, we decided to work with small groups of children, dividing them during the week and, in some cases, visiting the children in their homes. We have the great advantage that our Facilitators live directly in the community, which gives confidence to the parents to send their children to school.

We conducted our first training, which we did by department so as not to have too many people in the same place. We worked in Quiché, Huehuetenango, Sololá and Retalhuleu. On each training, the Facilitators received new knowledge and educational tools to put into practice in the classrooms. We started with a total of 34 Facilitators and 3 Community Coordinators.

Immediately after the trainings were completed, the classes began!

February

This month, we completed academic evaluations for every student to identify their initial learning. The preschool academic evaluations are conducted twice during the school year: once at the beginning of the year and once at the end of the year. This is made to measure the level of knowledge acquired.

Also in this month, we took the anthropometric measurements as part of the nutritional support program for "Chispuditos", a nutritional beverage that all students take every day.

March

We visited all our classrooms to verify the proper functioning and to be able to support and resolve any difficulties in class.

We explored new communities in need of preschool education in the department of Santa Rosa, Guatemala.

April

Our children do different activities in class!

We work with small groups during the week. We try to be as careful as possible with the mask use, disinfectant gel, and thermometer to take the temperature. We have the support of the parents to be able to work with their children.

In some communities, our Facilitators continue to visit the children in their homes.

May

This month we had the opportunity to plant more than 500 trees, this was the first time we did this activity, and we hope to continue every year and make it a tradition within the program. It is a way to raise awareness and teach our children to reforest and take care of nature from a very early age.

Before planting each tree, our Facilitators received a previous talk about the reason for this activity, and then each Facilitator transmitted it to their group of children. Each child and facilitator planted their own tree in Huehuetenango, Sololá, Quiché and Retalhuleu.

It was an activity that our children enjoyed very much. Also, the parents expressed their gratitude for this initiative of great benefit to all.

June

Our Facilitators had the opportunity to receive talks on family planning and health. This with the sole purpose of helping them to know the different options to have healthy family planning.

This was through our friends from Wings, who have experience in these relevant topics for the family and women.

We also received nutrition training, learning easy and nutritious recipes to share with the families in the different communities. Thanks to Miracles in Action and CAN project.

July and August

We held our second training for the whole team! Again it was not possible to gather the whole team of Facilitators and Coordinators in the same place and we did it by department.

We spent several weeks in each department, conducting the different training.

For: Huehuetenango, Retalhuleu, Sololá and Quiché.

September

We started working in a new community with great happiness and joy, opening two new Magical Classrooms in Guayabales and Miramar. These communities are in Chiquimulilla, Santa Rosa, which is located in the southeast of Guatemala, a place with a tropical climate, so it is very hot.

These are rural communities in need of preschool education, so we are eager to support the children in these communities. We work together in this area with the social organization Let Hope Begin Guatemala.

We have two Facilitators working with us, who received intensive training beforehand to develop our program in the best way.

October

This month we had many activities:

-We celebrated Children's Day! Each one of them integrates the heart of our program! October 1st is an especial date for all children in Guatemala.

-During the week of October 25th, all of our Magical Classrooms celebrated their closing of the school year! They carried out different activities, and the protagonists, of course, were our children demonstrating how much they have learned cognitively and socially during all these months!

Closures in: Huehuetenango, Retalhuleu, Sololá and Quiché.

November

-The beginning of our "Vacation school"!

Yes! this is the first year we have integrated the vacation school. It is so that our children can continue learning and when they start the new year it will not be difficult for them to resume their studies.

Our vacation school is scheduled to run for six weeks and has many fun activities for our kids!

Many children in Guatemala spend two or even three months without educational activity during vacations. It impacts their progress, and when they resume their studies, they are affected and slow their level of knowledge.

-Days before starting our vacation school, we conducted our 3rd and last training of the year for all our Facilitators. We carry out activities to prepare our Facilitators with the vacation topics.

December

-Our team of Facilitators and Community Coordinators worked for 12 months.

We had a total of 36 facilitators, 3 Community Coordinators.

We worked in 28 different communities distributed in Quiché, Huehuetenango, Sololá, Retalhuleu, and Santa Rosa.

-During this year, we had 36 Magical Classrooms in operation, and we served 436 children!

In the third week of December, we finished our "Vacation school".

We did different activities for the Christmas season to conclude and together with our children.

Some of our children will continue, and we will see them in our program next year, but other kids will continue to advance towards their first year of primary school in a public school. We wish them every success!

During the 12 months, all our children received their vitamin supplement of atole "Chispudito" to support the complete development of our students.

We performed the 2nd anthropometric process for each child. We are working to obtain the statistical data, and as soon as we have them, we will be sharing them with you.

We did the second academic evaluation of each of our students to identify their learning progress.

We are also working on getting statistics on the children who are in a public school in the elementary grades. It applies to children who have been in our program in the past. We want to know how the children have done after being with us.

We had the opportunity to deliver water filters to our classrooms. It is a great benefit for our children to have purified water to drink!

Thank you, Go Philanthropic!!!

We delivered food to our 36 Facilitators and 3 Community Coordinators of our program. Delivering food is a great help for them and their families.

Thank you very much, Go Philanthropic!

We are grateful for the support and trust of all the social organizations that assist us.

Miracles In Action
Go Philanthropic
Project Quetzal
Go Campaign
Let Hope Begin Guatemala
Mathile Institute
Friends of Aula Mágica
Global Giving