Quick summary: with $10 a month for a year ($120 total), you can enable a Guatemalan child to attend middle school. The overhead is only 5%, 95% of your donation goes directly where it's needed. Please, if you decide to donate, or to repeat your donation, send an email to jquinn+padrino@cs.oberlin.edu, which includes the amount of your donation, the name on your check, and your physical address.

Other links: - periodic table activity (in Spanish) - Donate computers -

The people here in La Trinidad are lucky. After four years of interminable paperwork, and one year of quasi-legal classes, they have an official middle school. Their children will graduate with diplomas that are good throughout Guatemala. Even though the federal money for this school will pay about 20% of the shoestring budget for the school; they are ready to do what it takes to make sure this school happens, and that makes them luckier than most Guatemalans. Perhaps it's because they spent 14 years in Mexico as refugees after the army burned their town, and the peace accords which granted them land to return to Guatemala also promised them schools. Perhaps it's because, when they saw my college-educated Guatemalan wife and me walk into the county education office, the bureaucrats stopped putting so many hurdles in our way as before when they were just dealing with a bunch of campesinos (peasants). Perhaps it's luck. Or perhaps all of those. But the fact is, we have the approval, while most small communities can work for years and never get the approval to open a school.

No longer do their children have to cross 2 rivers to receive more than a primary education. Yes, there's a bus, but in the rainy season or during volcanic eruptions, the bus home has sometimes had to wait until midnight to make a safe crossing, on a road where bandits are not unknown. (Yes, that's right, we live on an active volcano, the rivers sometimes have hot rocks in them, right this instant I can turn around and see the lava shooting hundreds of feet in the air up on top of the volcano!)

Of course, the parents here are enthusiastic about having a new school. In planning the school, the meetings filled the chapel, and over 30 parents promised to enroll their children (that doesn't count students from the neighboring towns). But at least a dozen never made that promise because they knew that they couldn't afford even the low 50 quetzal monthly fee, the equivalent of about $6.50. And when enrollment time arrived, under 20 showed up. The others told us, ashamed, that they couldn't find the money. And honestly, even all the tuitions together wouldn't cover expenses. In the most optimistic budget, with my wife and I both working as teachers for a single salary, they'd cover about half.

In Guatemala, less than 20% of all children receive a middle-school education*. For those who do not, the reason is usually the absence of a nearby middle-school or the inability to pay the minimal tuition and materials fee. The central government recently washed its hands of the problem by inventing the category of charter or "cooperative" schools, where the parents organize the whole thing, and then the funds supposedly come a third from tuitions, a third from the county (which in reality never gives more than a symbolic yearly amount), and a third from the federal government (which, even though it's reduced its responsibility to a third, still approves only a fraction of the new schools that are needed).

There are three basic ways to support our school this year. You can be a padrino or madrina. We are also fixing up a beaten-down old building as a library and computer center; we’d welcome contributions to our construction budget, which totals about $800. And you can help us buy monitors for donated computers (the monitors don’t travel as well, so we buy them here) for $50 each. However you support us this year, it will also help us look for longer-term solution to the funding problem; we are actively forging a network of similar schools (community-run middle schools in communities displaced by the war), and our students are planning a student association that could eventually give scholarships with its own money.

The words padrino and madrina literally mean godfather and godmother. Here people may have several different godparents as they grow up, sponsoring them in different important (and costly) life events. To be a godparent, you send $10 a month. That covers a one-time family payment of 100 quetzales for the child and family to buy school implements for the year, and 80 quetzales a month for the school. This, unlike the 40 Q tuition, covers the true costs**. The following year, you can decide if you want to renew your commitment. (If you don't want to deal with another monthly reminder and check to write, you can send the $120 all at once, and we'll parcel it out over the year).

To support the school, please send a check AND write me an email. The email should be adressed to jquinn+padrino@cs.oberlin.edu and should include a the amount of your check, the name on your check, your physical address, and any preferences you have about who you want to support. If you want to receive periodic email updates and urgent actions on the political situations in Guatemala and neighboring Honduras, Chiapas and El Salvador, or from other developing situations in Latin America, include a note with your email that mentions the Rights Action mail list. The tax-deductible check should be made out to "Rights Action", should include "basico la trinidad" in the comments, and should be sent to:

Rights Action
1830 Connecticut ave NW
Washington, DC 20009

If you want to make a donation by credit card, there is a link to do so on the Rights Action page. If you want this money to go to the scholarship program (or the Hormiguitas program), PLEASE LET US KNOW when you donate.

Once you are a godparent, you will get a thank-you letter from your child. Unfortunately, we have had serious problems with mail delivery, so we can't guarantee that it will come quickly, however we will send you an email acknowledgement.

ps. Right now, this school's most important need is for these "Madrina/Padrino" scholarships. But if you want to support us further, we can certainly use your help. Get in touch, we'll talk. Also, we're in the process of organizing a way to transport donated computers for our school, and, if we're successful, for other needy Guatemalan schools. If you have an old computer to donate (more or less modern), or another $50 to help us buy monitors for the computers when they arrive, wait about a month for more details in our next email.

*19.1% of middle-school-age children attended school in 1999 according to the UN report from 2000. The figure is closer to 25% by now, but still less than 20% graduate, and for rural areas the statistics suggest that the number is under 14%.

**2/3 of the costs are teachers' salaries, the rest is mostly paper, toner, chalk, and electricity. Many of these "adopt a poor child" requests like this will break down the commitment for you in pennies a day, I'll leave you to figure out if you can afford it your own way.

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