ICA REPORTS – ICA GUATEMALA

Conacaste couple make a dream come true

By Joaquina Rodriguez

A couple from the Concaste Human Development Project who helped expand its educational outreach programmes in the 1980s notched another victory when the Ministry of Education posted their daughter as a pre-school teacher to La Vegona, a village in the vicinity.

Clemente Escalante was convinced that ICA’s pre-school methods was key to the development of his village and the region. He encouraged his wife Mayra to join ICA‘s group of community teachers when it expanded its pre-school programme to eight other villages in 1986. She and her fellow teacher taught at La Vegona in La Unión, Zacapa. They toiled to make the programme a success and even managed to get a building for the preschool.

As years went by, ICA Guatemala was unable to keep funding the project and the Education Ministry took over the school. It decided not to keep Mayra and her team as they had not been through its training programme and assigned its own teachers instead.

However, Clemente and Mayra kept on with their community work and studied on Saturdays to become qualified teachers. They also sent their elder daughter for pre-school teacher training. The couple are now high school teachers while their daughter teaches at the same pre-school where her mother once taught.

The family , which overcame its difficulties to attain its goals, is one of the success stories of the project.

Joaquina Rodriguez (joaquinaruz@yahoo.com.mx) is director of ICA Guatemala. The article was translated by  Amanda Urrutia.