Spring 2013

A Busy Spring

April 8^th marked exactly six months since the death of our beloved friend Loren.  We miss him every time we leave our desks and walk into the living room where he was always stretched out on the couch either reading or napping.  We miss having him always available to listen to a new idea, proof read a paragraph, or lend a sympathetic ear to one of life’s small problems.  We feel his loss personally but the work of the Guatemala Scholarship Program has continued without a hitch.  We have selected a new group of students for 2013 and overseen their enrollment; the annual “Boletin” has been written and mailed to all of our graduates; preparations for the Student Conference were especially intensive as we prepared not only for the students but for several visitors from the States.  (See Joe Snyder’s article about the conference)  Now we have almost finished the Update and I will take it back to the U.S with me for mailing when I leave on May 18^th.

This year the Student Conference focused on “Escritura y Lectura” (reading and writing).  We were pleased that Marielos Porras agreed to act as our main presenter and showed us how to stimulate learning and retention in young children by reading to them. As she pointed out, the same techniques work with students of every age.  Marielos not only teaches teachers at the Rafeal Landivar University, she also teaches primary school students at the Evelyn Rodgers school, a top ranked private school in Guatemala City.  As usual most of the students arrived on Saturday when we held an additional workshop on writing letters to sponsors and listened to an inspiring report and slide show from Rolene Walker.  The topic of her presentation was her concern for the environment which led to her two year “Walk for the Earth” from San Francisco, California to Santiago, Chile.  As usual the conference program also included games and entertainments with songs, dances, skits, and a variety of “ice breakers”.  In all the students were given many different opportunities to work and play together (one of our major goals in bringing them together).

 With the goal of encouraging greater participation in the scholarship program and celebrating our 40^th year of existence we invited several North Americans to attend this year’s conference.  In the end we welcomed as guests, two members of Guatemala Friends Meeting, one member of Redwood Forest Friends Meeting, two members of Multnomah Friends Meeting, two representatives of Pacific Yearly Meeting and one non Quaker member of the Progresa Board.  We think that spending time and interacting with our students has inspired these supporters to become even more involved with our program and we look forward to working with them in the future. 

The desire to reach out and get more Quakers involved the Guatemala Scholarship Program is also the motivation behind another new project, that of revamping and improving our website.  We have already begun to work with a local consultant and hope to have our new site ready for previewing by the end of June.  Meanwhile we are brainstorming for other ideas of ways to generate interest in Progresa.