The Project
Volunteer Teaching and Travel in Central America

Please note: our education projects in Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua are unique to Global Vision International. All funding of these projects comes directly from Global Vision International and volunteer contributions, included in the programme fee. We receive no other outside source of income, apart from that raised through GVI and volunteer contributions. Suffice to say, without this funding from GVI and the volunteer contributions, the projects simply would not exist.

Guatemala

The indigenous Maya in Guatemala make up a huge percentage of the population, yet many live off just $1 a day. Global Vision International has set up our own schools in two indigenous communities in Guatemala, San Andrés Itzapa and Santa Maria de Jesus, which are both within a 45 minute bus ride from Antigua through lush mountain scenery and typical Guatemalan villages. GVI’s aims are first and foremost in education, paying particular focus on literacy and educational reinforcement for the children of each community.

Honduras

GVI has committed itself to helping and assisting the Maya Chortí villages around Copan Ruinas. We work in the Maya Chortí community of San Rafael, which has a populations of approximately 300 and an average family income of about 25 Lempiras (just over a dollar) a day. With this money, up to ten children must be fed, clothed and educated. Though education is free in Honduras, the materials are not, which can force children not to attend. GVI and volunteer contributions are removing this financial constraint by supplying the children with the school materials they require also started the GVI Secondary School in 2008. It is hoped that with the extra income the family will receive with this burden removed, those children who have dropped out will return.

Nicaragua

In rural Nicaragua, education and literacy levels are depressingly low, despite the “Year of Literacy” in 1980 when the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) government concentrated on the country’s high levels of illiteracy. In the rural community La Thompson a large portion of the families rely on working in the surrounding tobacco fields or in the tobacco factories in the nearby town of Estelí. The work is unreliable and poorly paid hence poverty levels are extremely high. We aim to help by providing an opportunity for children in rural areas with low levels of literacy: the present day problems with education are economic and lack a of teaching materials and teachers themselves. There is a huge need for help within these communities where the local understaffed schools are sometimes an hour’s walk from the children homes