School-to-school partnerships mean brighter futures for Guatemalan students

Former St. Anthony’s and Villa Academy educators work to forge relationships between area Catholic schools and the poor of rural Guatemala

BY KEVIN BIRNBAUM

When Gary Teale and Ann Austin left Seattle for Guatemala in the summer of 2006, the husband-and-wife team of Catholic educators had no intention of starting an international nonprofit corporation.  Teale, who had been principal of St. Anthony School in Renton, and Austin, who taught at Villa Academy in Seattle, just wanted to take a break from their careers and spend some time volunteering in a different part of the world.

Yet two years later, they are in the final stages of applying for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status for Avivara, the organization they’ve founded to help improve the quality of education in Guatemala, and Teale is wrapping up a five-week tour of Western Washington to encourage Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Seattle to form school-to-school relationships with struggling schools in rural Guatemala.

Seeing the need
During their first 14 months in Guatemala, Teale and Austin worked with a project that provided educational support for children whose families live and work in the Guatemala City garbage dump, and they wondered why there was a steady stream of people moving from rural areas into the slums of the city.

“And what we found,” Teale said, “was that in the rural, indigenous areas, the poverty was actually worse than it was in the city.  So we started to look at what the needs were in the rural, indigenous areas of Guatemala.  Being both educators, we were naturally drawn to: How were the schools functioning in those small villages?”

They discovered that the schools, many of which were built shortly after the end of the Guatemalan Civil War in 1996, no longer received sufficient government funding and were in a sorry state.

“There’s nothing in them,” Teale said.  “The kids are sometimes sitting on buckets, sometimes really old, really battered furniture, oftentimes no electricity, no lights, no running water, maybe one teacher for 70 kids in a classroom.”

On top of the decrepit state of the schools, Teale said, the average child in rural Guatemala receives only three years of education, largely because the cost for a year’s supplies and uniform is equivalent to a month’s income for many families, about half of which can’t even afford sufficient food.

Working for change
“We decided what we’d like to do is work with schools in small villages, find out what their needs were, and then try to find funding to help purchase the things they needed,” Teale said.  Out of that desire and a friendship with Gustavo Valle, a Guatemalan with a similar vision, grew the organization that would become Avivara, which means “to enliven, to brighten or to spur on.”

Better education is essential, Teale said, because a family’s earning capacity increases dramatically if their child can finish sixth grade or high school.  Quality schools can also help to stabilize entire communities, he said.

In its first year, Avivara has helped three schools purchase essentials like lights, blackboards and textbooks, has provided scholarships for two dedicated students, and has established one after-school learning center to help students with schoolwork.  Soon, Teale said, they hope to have an annual operating budget of $50,000, which would enable them to support 10 to 12 schools, 15 students on scholarship and five or six after-school learning centers.

“We’re being approached every day almost by teachers who’ve heard about us in Guatemala,” Teale said, “and they say, ‘Oh, could you come out and look at our school?’  So the need is clearly very profound.”

Getting Catholic schools involved
During the past month, Teale has been working to recruit Catholic schools throughout Western Washington to get involved with answering that need by forming school-to-school relationships with schools in rural Guatemala.  He believes that both schools will benefit from such an arrangement: through instructional units and digital videos, students in Washington will see what life is like in rural Guatemala and come to a greater appreciation of the Catholic Church’s social teachings.  They will also hold fundraisers to help meet the needs of their sister school in Guatemala. 

“It could be that a school can raise $600 to $1,000,” Teale said.  “Well, that goes a long way for a small school.”

Six Catholic schools in the archdiocese have already expressed eagerness to participate, he said.  One of those is St. Monica’s on Mercer Island, where students are already excited about their relationship with La Escuela Rural de Yalu in Sumpango, Guatemala.

“Individual classrooms have come up with ideas of things that they’re going to do to raise money,” said St. Monica Principal Pam Dellino.  “One came up right away, and that was the sixth-grade class decided to sell gumdrops for Guatemala.”