Let's Leave No Girl Behind
Early spring 2016, upon learning that Guatemala harbors the lowest literacy rate in all of Latin America, the State of Jefferson Rotary eClub launched an international signature project, “Let’s Leave No Girl Behind” in Nuevo San Ildefonso, a small Mayan village in a remote region of northwestern Guatemala. This has become the club's signature project and is expected to continue over the years. Only 30% of children in Guatemala graduate from primary school. Much worse, only 10% of rural indigenous girls complete primary school due to poverty and discrimination. Lack of education for girls often leads to early marriage and child bearing, domestic servitude, and unremitting poverty from which they rarely escape. Indigenous Mayan girls are by far the country’s most disadvantaged and vulnerable group. Our club invited district Rotarian Frances Dixon, founder and president of Adopt-a-Village, a nonprofit organization in Guatemala, to implement a project that would bring literacy and hope to impoverished young women and at the same time, provide needed electricity via solar power for their homes. (World Bank figures show that almost 30% of rural Guatemalans have no access to electricity). The literacy program, which has been enormously successful in assisting both teen-age girls, as well as illiterate women, to learn Spanish, has already changed lives. A trained bilingual (Q’anjob’al and Spanish) “traveling teacher” was assigned to spend one day per week in the village for six months to teach the women to speak, write, and read the basics of Spanish, the national language. Few of the girls and women had ever attended school. Families in the region now enthusiastically await the rumbling sound of the four-wheel drive pick-up truck packed with solar power units that bring light and hope to their modest homes. Our two Guatemalan-based Rotarians are on standby, ready to install the units upon their arrival.
In addition, our club committed to supporting a partial scholarship for a teen-age girl to attend the Maya Jaguar Educational Center’s boarding school. Proud scholarship recipient Isabel Ramirez Lucas will graduate from the Maya Jaguar Middle School in October and she writes regularly to the club about her progress at school. Creating literacy opportunities for indigenous girls can change the course of their lives, empowering them to leave behind grinding poverty in exchange for promising and productive futures. The “Let’s Leave No Girl Behind” project underpins these hopes and dreams. Our club’s first major international project encompasses all the strengths for expansion to future projects. Club members have the influence, drive, ability, and desire at hand to bring literacy to hundreds of more Mayan girls in the future.
Club fundraising efforts continue to contribute further to these efforts!
This project has been funded by eClub Member donations and fundraisers. Would you like to help financially?
Thank you for your interest and generosity!