Delmy Velasquez, Delmy Tuch, and Karla are recent grads in the summer of 2023 in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala.Supplied
The organizer: Tracy Gates
The pitch: Creating Project Maltioxinem
The reason: To support the education of girls in Guatemala.
A few years ago Tracy Gates was looking for an inexpensive place to learn Spanish when she settled on a course in Guatemala.
Ms. Gates spent a few weeks there in the summer of 2016 and went back the following summer for a longer stretch. During that visit she stayed in a rented house on Lake Atitlan, about 126 kilometres west of Guatemala City.
The lake is surrounded by Mayan villages and Ms. Gates got to know some of the locals. “It’s aesthetically a really beautiful place and the local people are really lovely,” she recalled from her home in Vancouver. “But there’s just an extreme level of poverty.”
Ms. Gates has a background in education and she has a particular interest in the promotion of literacy in developing countries, especially for women and girls. “There’s a lot of data to support that when women and girls receive education, not just their lives improve, but the lives of their families improve and the lives of local community improve,” said Ms. Gates, who is principal of Claren Academy in Vancouver.
With the help of community volunteers, she launched Project Maltioxinem and offered English language courses for girls to help them land jobs in the tourism sector. The first classes began in the summer of 2018 and around 10 students attended. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Ms. Gates stopped the courses and delivered food to the families of students.
As the pandemic eased in 2022, Ms. Gates refocused the project on offering scholarships to girls who wanted to finish high school. While education is generally free in Guatemala, students still have to pay for supplies, uniforms and textbooks. Ms. Gates has provided four scholarships so far and three of the girls have graduated. One student plans to attend university, which Ms. Gates is also hoping to help fund.
It costs about $1,000 annually to fund a high-school student and up to $6,000 for someone to attend university. Ms. Gates and a team of volunteers raise around $10,000 every year but they are hoping to boost that amount this year to fund more scholarships.
Ms. Gates returns to Lake Atitlan as much as possible and she finds it rewarding to see the progress of the girls the project has helped. “They’re growing into young women,” she said. “There is also a very large sense of responsibility, in the sense that if you can’t raise enough money, what’s going to happen?”