Building Capabilities + Giving Tuesday Donation MATCH

NOVEMBER UPDATE

Building Capabilities

& Giving Tuesday Donation MATCH!

Merlina's Journey to Reading

Merlina is a 3rd grader here in Santa Cruz. She always had the desire to learn to read, but she struggled and was never given the right tools to achieve her goal. Our Reading Program Teacher, Paulina, noticed Merlina's frustration and offered to provide special tutoring sessions for her on Saturdays, outside of her work time, to help improve her reading skills.

After months of effort, Merlina can now read complex words and even wrote a happy birthday letter to her mother, Julia. Julia was herself illiterate and cried when she received that letter and saw what her daughter had accomplished. Her daughter's effort so inspired her that she also began working every week with Paulina so she could learn to read that letter - and now she can!

Julia's parents did not believe in providing an education for their daughters, but Julia knew she wanted a different future for Merlina. Now, both mother and daughter can read together and feel pride together in what they have accomplished.

SAVE THE DATE!

GivingTuesday is just around the corner! This is an opportunity for people worldwide to stand together in unity - to use their individual power of generosity to contribute to the creation of a better world. For us at AMIGOS, the world starts here in Santa Cruz La Laguna, Guatemala!

The Tuesday after Thanksgiving, NOVEMBER 30th , all donations will be DOUBLED by a generous donor up to $10,000!

What if we all came together to support Amigos' mission to continue empowering youth to break the cycle of poverty in Santa Cruz? We can!

Can't wait to donate? You can donate right now and note 'Giving Tuesday' in the memo to have it doubled on Tuesday.

Evaluating Our Reading Program

This year has been full of challenges but also of many joys! One of them is that our children's reading program is becoming more and more complete and capable of generating concrete skills for the children of Santa Cruz.

With the help of La Puerta Abierta, a learning center on the other side of the lake in Santiago Atitlán, we currently conducting assessments of children's reading skills to monitor their progress made. The assessment measures comprehension skills, vocabulary, sentence construction, reasoning and association skills, as well as information retention. The results will help inform our teachers of where we are doing well and where we need to improve to ensure our program has solid results.

We are very excited to see the improvements year after year and to be able to generate strategies to provide the support that Santa Cruz children deserve.

Bringing Sexual and Reproductive Health Education into the Home

The stigma and taboo against speaking about sexual and reproductive issues is strong in rural Guatemalan villages like Santa Cruz.

Our Sexual & Reproductive Health (SRH) Program seeks to increase the knowledge necessary to make more informed decisions about issues such as pregnancy and parental roles.

While we continue to work with students and teachers in the schools, support from mothers is essential. Therefore, as we cannot convene groups due to ongoing COVID concerns, our staff are going door-to-door to speak with those mothers. The goal is to both increase the mother's support for SRH education, as well as to answer the women's personal questions relating to their health and their families.

These visits have proven to be a strategic moment to answer doubts, question beliefs and learn information that was previously unknown.

Please consider becoming a monthly donor!

Every dollar goes directly to improving the lives of the indigenous people of Santa Cruz and surrounding villages through education and sustainable economic empowerment.

amigosdesantacruz.org

info@amigosdensantacruz.org