The Mayan Health and Education Project has made great progress in recent months, thanks to generous support from our donors. Over 100 people attended a fundraising event in May at the Point Grey home of Leonard Schein and Barbara Small. Stephen Greenham and Lorne Tyczenski of Trafalgar’s Bistro donated catering for the reception, and several companies and individuals contributed items for a silent auction. Funds raised through the event are helping to support the first year of operation of the Huixoc junior high school.

Construction of the school building was finished last year with donations to our project for flooring, windows and safety railings. Alejandro Ruiz, who moved to Vancouver from Huixoc as a refugee in the 1980’s, travelled there with me in December. We left behind a fully equipped classroom, a teacher, 30 enthusiastic students, a management committee of elders, an educational mentor experienced in running a bilingual school, technical support for the computers we carried from Canada, and a community that is committed to making the school a success.

We are fortunate to have a well-trained young teacher. Clara Luz was born and raised in Huixoc and is fluent in Spanish and the local Mayan dialect, Mam. The 22-year-old is the first woman from the village to graduate from high school. Funding from our project helped Clara Luz to receive training in bilingual teaching methods through the Talita Kumi Institute in San Pedro Carcha’, located a day’s travel from the village. I was honoured to join a delegation of family and village elders at her graduation ceremony at the Institute on Nov. 26. We then made the trip back to Huixoc for a celebration in the village. A Mayan priest blessed the gathering in a traditional ceremony, and the whole community participated in the occasion with home-made tamales, live marimba music and dancing.

Over the next two weeks, I worked every day in the medical clinic, which was completed and furnished with medical supplies in 2002, using funds donated to our project. Alejandro and I met frequently with the seven-member committee of elders who will manage the school. We shopped for school furniture and set up the classroom. We rewired the building to accommodate five laptop computers, programmed in Spanish, that we had carried with us from Vancouver. We spent an afternoon walking to and from one of the region’s villages an hour up a winding muddy road and then another 30 minutes on a path through the jungle-- a walk that some students will make every day to attend the school.

We met individually with the 30 students, age 13-15, who will make up the first Grade 7 class. We hope to find sponsorship for these students for the three years that it will take for them to graduate from the program. They and their parents have signed contracts stating their commitment to completing Grades 7, 8 and 9, and to repaying the $50 per month cost of the program if students drop out before completion.

We also met with Guillermo Chen, who is the educational director of an existing bilingual school in Rabinal, Guatemala, that has provided a model for our school and curriculum. Guillermo has agreed to serve as a mentor and advisor for the Huixoc school. On our return to Guatemala City for our flight home, we met with a Mayan organization in Chemaltenango that has agreed to provide ongoing leadership training for the school management committee.

What’s next …

My sixth trip to Guatemala is planned for this spring. I will again join a team of health professionals from the non-profit organization Companero En Salud/Partner For Surgery to conduct surgical screening in areas with limited access to medical care. The team evaluates patients with serious surgically-correctable problems such as blindness from cataracts, disabling hernias, severe gynecological conditions or burn scars that limit mobility. These patients will later travel to a regional hospital for procedures performed by volunteer surgeons, mostly from the US.

I hope to do some medical teaching and have invited students from the UBC Faculty of Medicine to accompany me to Guatemala. This trip will also provide an opportunity to take more laptop computers to Huixoc. With the purchase or donation of at least five additional computers, every three students in the Grade 7 class can share a computer to assist their learning. As well, we are seeking donations of computers for our second class to begin next year. And I am following up on previous discussions with the Canadian Ambassador to Guatemala regarding potential funding for a library and for a sustainable project, such as a chicken farm, that will help the school become self-supporting.

I look forward to updating you after my return and hope that I can count on your continued support.

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