2009

Three cooperating projects

The context

After the bloody civil war that suffered Guatemala for 36 years and which originated more than 200.000 deaths and thousand people displaced, exiled, tortured and disappeared and more than 80% of its population living under the poverty line in 1996. Today, Guatemala, present still a very precarious economic and social scenario where they put serious educational deficits that are evident in a high rate of adult illiteracy which is around 40%.

The basic school coverage is insufficient and teachers have no university degree, as they have only a very basic high school. The degrees in Guatemala do not have common rule of approval for all of them, as each one formulates freely the content from every one of the degrees. With the current Government of President Álvaro Colom there are very advanced talks and points of agreements signed with the Teachers Union of Guatemala (counterpart of one project we will evaluate) to face the new challenge of teacher professionalization. The low budget to public education, which is less than 2% of GDP, is the direct cause of educational inequities in the country (gender, ethnic or territorial).

The project to evaluate

We will evaluate three projects. All of them are linked and form part of an annual program of training of workers who perform the Sindicat de Treballadores i Treballadors de l' Educació-Intersindical de les Illes Balears (STEI-i) and its NGO Ensenyants Solidaris. They are the following ones:

• Accompanying of the Projects of literacy and development projects of the National Coordinator of Vivedas of Guatemala (CONAVIGUA) and Ecumenical Services in Central America (SEFCA)
• Technical and educational support to the teachers of the Union of Teachers of Guatemala (STEG) 2009
• Support to the work of development cooperation of the Association of Human Rights in Guatemala (ADEHGUA) 2009

Through these projects, voluntary donors make stays in Guatemala. We put a lot of emphasis in the fact that the volunteer teacher must transmit later all the learning acquired in their environment, to generate a greater commitment to solidarity in the Illes Balears. So, the proposed evaluation has, therefore, as geographically diverse departments of Guatemala: the place of implementation of the projects and the Illes Balears, where have been done the training of workers.