Blog

A Loan – How It Affects Financial Literacy?

People tend to rush to have fun. If you offer 4-year-olds a choice: a piece of cake now or two exactly the same, but tomorrow, the vast majority will choose “today’s” cake. Postponing consumption for the future in order to save more is a difficult and inefficient strategy. A loan is its opposite side. This…

Dyslexia – The Reason Why You Cannot Read Well

The problem of impossibility to read may be explained not only poor environment but also medical conditions. Dyslexia is one of the most common learning problems in children, which manifests itself as a specific reading disorder. The cause of this disease is associated with neurological disorders of a genetic nature. A dyslexic person has difficulty…

The Women of Guatemala

There are women in the world stronger and more courageous than you or I could ever dream of being. There are women who haul crates off the backs of buses. They hang off the sides of vans to hitch a ride down the road. They balance a baby on their back and a bucket of…

A Dream Come True

As the co-host on this year’s Learning Journey, I cherished the opportunity I had to intimately connect ten of our supporters to the work in which they had invested. While I do my best to connect people to Reading Village’s work throughout the year, the Learning Journey creates the perfect vehicle to directly connect the…

How One Question Can Change Anything

I recently read a piece in the New York Times about Kyle Schwartz, a Denver-based teacher who began asking her students to complete the following sentence: I wish my teacher knew… The responses were astounding, heartbreaking, inspiring, and enlightening. They gave Ms. Schwartz new insights into her students’ challenges and motivations. One student wrote: I…

Rainy Season

School is in session in the Department of Solola, Guatemala.  Our youth leaders of Reading Village are deeply involved with their personal studies, learning daily how to engage young children in reading activities, and assisting their families with daily chores to keep households running.  And all of this during the rainy season. In Solola during the…

The Truth About Teens

Eight years ago when we first began thinking about community-based reading promoters, a group of Guatemalan advisors cautioned us saying: “We’re going to tell you the truth about teens. You can’t build a successful literacy program that depends on teen-age kids! At that age they are just too distracted and unpredictable.” Despite warnings from the…

A Powerful Impression

During a group discussion on our recent Learning Journey in Guatemala, I challenged my Guatemalan colleagues to recount for our travelers any tales of impact and inspiration from their work. In that moment, my colleague Brenda, one of the Community Facilitators who mentors the youth leaders, offered an example from the community of Chaquijya, one…

Introducing Angel

Introducing the newest member of the Reading Village team – baby Angel! What better gift to celebrate Reading Village’s 10th year than the birth of Angel Alfredo Xitamul! Little Angel was born in February to Luis and Angelica, alumni of our Leaders and Readers Program. The first child born in Concepcion to parents with high…

Fanning the Flames of Potential

We work in a country where the dominant narrative among nonprofit organizations is about brokenness, suffering, and scarcity of resources. So, there would be an understandable impulse for an organization like ours see the teens with whom we work as “at-risk,” as people whose lives need to be “fixed,” or as individuals in need of…