Reading Village
The international development community is very focused on girls these days. This is a good thing. Around the world, girls have been neglected and discriminated against, abused and worse for far too long. Where boys go to school, girls stay home. Men’s paychecks are larger than women’s; though the burden they bear in society is …Continue Reading
We’ve always said that Reading Village transforms lives through literacy, but when our Executive Director, Linda Smith, founded the organization in 2007 she never intended the lives transformed to be only those of the children in Guatemala. Quite the contrary. Linda envisioned transformation rippling across communities through a network of local change-makers. Seven years later, …Continue Reading
There is nothing novel about working in Guatemala. Scholarships are an effective and common strategy by which to improve educational achievement. Indigenous communities are, and should be, among the most targeted beneficiaries. This isn’t new. But in a country where scholarships are sprinkled like fertilizer on a coffee crop, Reading Village is doing something …Continue Reading
The day began like any other. A cold morning with fog lifting over the lake. The sound of tin garage doors being rolled up to reveal store fronts. Women crouched over steaming tamales in the cold air. But today was different. From where we sat, today was bigger and better than any day that had …Continue Reading