It's the rainy season in Guatemala, and everything is wet. But not the manila folders safely tucked inside plastic bags clutched by some of Guatemala City's "working kids." They are participating in a nontraditional program inspired by the ideas of educator and activist Paulo Freire.
In the streets of downtown Guatemala City, in the central park, and in several public mercados, more than 1,300 children, ages 7-17, pull their schoolwork from manila folders carefully kept inside plastic bags and work on their reading and writing. As part of the innovative Childhope/Pennat program, 30 teachers are spending their mornings meeting with these children under trees in the park, in the streets next to their puestos (individual stands or stalls), and in small "classrooms" created in the mercados after children, their parents, and teachers have cleared out the garbage, scrubbed and painted the walls and floors, and moved in makeshift desks and chairs.
For Sonia, 13, "school" takes place in her stall, where she sells carbon (coal) at the Mercado La Parroquia. Sonia cheerfully pulls out her plastic bag the minute she sees Jose Manuel, her profe, approaching. (Profe is a generic term of respect and endearment for teachers.) Sonia spends her day selling coal and would not be able to study at all unless her profe came to her. She works on the papers in her folder whenever she has a break. She is now reading at a 2nd grade level and is not about to stop. Aericka, 16, works upstairs at the same market in a brighter stall, helping her mother sell dry goods. She hopes to complete the equivalent of 6th grade soon, which will bring her a diploma from the Ministry of Education and the chance for a job somewhere outside the market. Aericka is able to attend school for up to an hour a day in the small classroom that the market has allowed the parents and children to fix up.
Spending their mornings teaching children like Sonia and Aericka is only part of the labor of love performed by the program's teachers. In the afternoon, these profes spend hours making individual materials for 1,300-plus manila folders. In the Freire tradition, the materials respond to the basic needs in the children's lives. Children learn how to do simple math, read official documents relating to life in the mercados, understand their country's history, and manage a small business. They also receive lessons in avoiding drugs and disease. Teachers, many of whom are indigenous, must have Guatemalan teacher certification and three months of training with working kids before starting. Once hired, they attend rigorous training sessions every month, directed by Carlos Palacios, the project's education coordinator. Tom Lent, director of Redd-Barna, a Norwegian nongovernmental organization that pays the teachers' salaries, says no one is better equipped to do this training than Carlos, who "has as much savvy about street kids as anyone in Latin America."
Parents are vital to the program's success. Before children can participate, their parents must attend meetings to learn about the program and make a commitment to the need to educate their children. For some of these parents, who have not had the luxury of an education and may need their children close by simply to exist, this commitment is not a foregone conclusion. However, once they realize that the program is bringing school to the children, and not taking the children from them, they are sold on the idea.
Thanks to parents' advocacy and their small monthly contributions, tiny spaces in four different mercados have been designated as classrooms. Parents also must supply their children with a cuaderno (notebook), while the program supplies other materials, such as the teacher-made worksheets. The children's obvious pride in their work is a direct reflection of the pride their parents have in their contribution. In fact, some of the parents now ask if they can have their own folders to keep in plastic bags and learn how to read themselves!
To those accustomed to well-stocked libraries and affluent students, observing the spirit of Guatemala's working kids is cause for reflection. Last October, we raised enough money through an e-mail campaign to hold a field day for children in the program. Words cannot adequately describe the feeling of seeing more than 400 students, many of whom had never been swimming before, crowded into a swimming pool (fortunately, the pool was only four feet deep!). When it came time to eat, many of them ate only their beans and tortillas, taking their chicken home in a box to share with their families.
Childhope/Pennat's program to educate working children has been in existence in Guatemala City for only one year. The success of the program can readily be measured in the numbers of students, with 1,350 students served and more seeking enrollment. The essence of the program is most evident, however, in the stories and experiences of those teaching and learning through the program: Sonia sitting on the mercado floor working on her folder; Mauricia proudly showing her teacher the new paint job on the cement walls of her classroom (a garbage dumping area for the Terminal Mercado before the parents of her 40 students transformed it); Carlos telling you about his plans to take the project to every major city mercado in Guatemala. Though the program's methods may be unconventional, the children, parents, teachers, and administrators involved in the project have truly tapped into the power of learning.
