Post by Patrick Daniels and Jane Pelly

During November and December 2006, Guillermo Chen Morales, Director General of the New Hope Foundation (Fundación Nueva Esperanza), will be touring the UK and other European countries to share his experiences of developing and making education a reality for many young people in Rabinal, Guatemala. Much of the New Hope Foundation’s work is about promoting a more just society where indigenous Mayans in Guatemala (Maya Achi in Rabinal) have an equal stake in the Guatemala of tomorrow.


Humberto Ak'abal - Tz'olq'omin b'e (I walk backwards)

In 1999, the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) calculated that during the period 1981-83, the loss of life in the northern Guatemalan town of Rabinal at the hands of the military was at least 4,441 people (20% of the population). The CEH also pointed out that while the proportion of Maya Achi to ladinos in Rabinal is 82% to 18%, 99.8% of the victims of these massacres were Maya Achi. These topline statistics are just the start of the compelling case for explaining the campaign of violence of these times as one specifically directed towards the Maya Achi people.

In 2003, the Community Museum Rabinal Achi, the Bufete Juridico Popular and the Association for Integrated Development of the Maya Achi in the Verapaces (ADIVIMA), wrote a book "Oj K'aslik" ("We're Alive") that has contributed to the recovery of the historical memory of Rabinal. Part of the conclusion of Oj K'aslik is that it's vital to "eliminate the structural roots of the internal armed conflict, which includes promoting programmes for the eradication of ethnic discrimination in Rabinal". This objective of peace building through cultural empowerment provides the basis for the work of the New Hope Foundation (FNE), which offers multicultural and bilingual education, integrated and sustainable development of the cultural identity of the Maya Achi.

The New Hope Foundation (FNE) was established by Jesus Tecu Osorio in 1998 with funds from the Reebok prize for Human Rights which he won in 1996. Jesus, from the small village of Rio Negro witnessed the cold blooded massacre of his family as a child. His extraordinary life and work has led to those guilty of the massacre being brought to trial more than 20 years later, almost the only case of its kind in Guatemala.
 
The FNE created a scholarship program which has supported an increasing number of students, starting with 35 on an annual basis in 1998 to the point this year where it has helped over 150. In 2003, the New Hope Foundation realized their objective of establishing their own secondary school called Instituto Mixto Técnico Bilingüe, Nueva Esperanza, Rio Negro in memory of the massacre that took place in the 1980's.

The FNE programme is specifically orientated towards students of Maya Achi origin from small rural villages around Rabinal that were destroyed by the violence in the 1980’s and whose families live in poverty, a total of 31 communities. The instituto (secondary school) uses a popular bilingual methodology with orientation in human rights; it offers a unique, innovative and alternative type of education linked to the Maya Achi culture. Students do not pay for their education, but win scholarship places based on their ability and need. The educational programme is designed to give the additional support that students from rural villages need, to be able to keep up with their studies despite the difficulties of studying in their second language (Spanish) and deficiencies in their rural primary education. Importantly, the FNE promotes the creation of students who are active in their communities, retain their cultural values and work for social transformation.
 
Education is a luxury that the majority of people from the rural villages surrounding Rabinal can’t enjoy, less than half the children of primary school age currently finish their 6 years of primary education and of those only 53% continue to secondary level. Apart from the FNE, there are two types of school in Rabinal, those financed by the government and expensive private institutes. Both only offer a monolingual education in Spanish.  

The FNE has the following objectives:

    * promote education at the level of secondary, higher and further education
    * facilitate the human, social and occupational training through scholarships
    * promote consciousness, dignity, respect for human rights and cultural differences
    * contribute to the construction of justice, historical truth and participatory democracy

The alternative methodology used by the New Hope Foundation is being developed specifically to serve the needs of the rural impoverished and socially marginalized students from the Maya Achi communities that surround the town of Rabinal. This curriculum particularly promotes analytical abilities and experiential learning. The methodology consists of focusing on four learning areas: science; society; technology; and, language and communication.  

Students work through a series of workbooks which integrate the four learning areas, each module meeting particular teaching goals for each area. Each module also includes an investigative project in which students must apply what was learned in each module to their community. Thus students achieve a high level of academic knowledge, but particularly develop analytical skills that are applied to the social reality in which they live. This creates students who have a greater active commitment to transforming their communities. After three years, the students graduate with two titles, one a general culture certificate and the other as a promoter of rural wellbeing. The idea is to prepare young people, with a strong sense of their own cultural identity to return to work in and for their own rural communities and not emigrate to the main urban centres or the USA.

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Gullermo Chen Morales, Director General of the New Hope Foundation (FNE), will be visiting Spain, Germany and the UK in November-December 2006 to share the experiences of the FNE and the issues faced by young people in Rabinal.

You can see more photos on the work of Fundación Nueva Esperanza here.