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Students coming from Coban in bus rented for them.

This group is leading a group activity, know here as "dinámica"

Another view of the group on Saturday night

Students hearing the speech




Selecting Students for 2013

As we do each year, we opened the selection process for 2013 in August and will close it on November 15th. As I write this article we have already had interviews with 40 applicants and we still have a month to go. Many young people in the rural areas need our help. Recent research findings show that less than 3% of all Guatemalans study at the university level. For students like ours who for the most part come from rural poverty the numbers are much lower, way below 1%. In the last years we have averaged 80 applicants each year but have only been able to accept between 25 and 40 depending on the number who have graduated and the total of our donations. As we mentioned in the last Update, this year we had to lower the number of students we could accept. The following table summarizes the data for the last 5 years.

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 Conference “Oxlajuj Bak’tun”  2012

This year the principal theme of our annual conference was an explanation of Oxlajuj Bak’tun or the end of the Mayan calendar. Our invited speaker was Lina Barrios who is a recognized Guatemalan anthropologist who has conducted multiple investigations of both ancient Mayan culture and the current situation in Mayan villages. She has received various acknowledgements at both the national and international level for her work. She explained that the Mayans had several different calendars which had different purposes and that the “Choltun” or long calendar as it is called was only one ofhese. This calendar was divided into lengthy periods called Bak’tunes, the last of which, the 13th Bak’tun, will finish on December 21st of this year. In her conclusion, Lina explained that that the end of 13 Bak’tun does not have an apocalyptic significance. If it had a  special meanings for the ancient Mayans it was that it represents the end of an era or cycle and it would be an appropriate time to meditate on the direction humanity is headed. At the very least it is a time of privilege and space to analyze the good and the bad we have done and examine our relationship with mother nature and the universe in general as well as providing an opportunity to correct any errors we have made.