School for Street Children converts tourist dollars into miracles

QUETZALTENANGO/XELA, Guatemala – Henry’s parents died when he was young, leaving him at the mercy of a distant and not terribly interested relative. Lesbia’s father fell prey to alcoholism, and after a brutal 10-year battle, his body was found in a river near here. Damaris never knew her father, but a loving grandmother filled in the gaps – until a couple of years ago, when she took to her bed. Last year, she died.

Just a few minutes ago, these sixth-graders were reciting the standard visitor’s greeting for me, then grilling me, along with a roomful of their peers – ordinary kids in an ordinary classroom. Now that it’s just the six of us, I’m passing the recorder and asking each of them to tell me their stories, and the tears begin to flow. Tears of grief, but also tears of gratitude.

These are the kids who fell through the cracks, but then were caught by a nurturing network of teachers and volunteers. The School for Street Children (Escuela de la Calle, or EDELAC) began as the quixotic dream of three teachers and a U.S. volunteer who quit their jobs to hold classes in the streets.

Fifteen years later, the project has grown into a well equipped school for 200 children, a shelter for the most needy of them, an internationally known trekking company staffed completely by volunteers and an innovative model for social entrepreneurism.

My first contact with the school was a couple of weeks ago when I prepared to climb Tajumulco, the tallest peak in Central America. I’d heard about Quetzaltrekkers, the tour group who donates all its profits to a school for street children, from Edgar Chitop, a local journalist who serves on the board. Naturally when I chose a trekking company, this was the one.

I encountered a lively group of volunteers, housed at the back of the bohemian youth hostel Casa Argentina, going over gear for the next day’s trek. Yes, they still had room for me, but there was no time to waste. The story of the epic trek is here.

Two days and a summit later, Alexa, a geography major from Pennsylvania, and Dara, a pre-med student from New York, shared a little of what motivated them to give three months of their life without pay to work seven days a week, trekking in the rain and mud, to this organization.

“It sounds like a cliché, but it’s really true – we do it for the kids,” said Alexa. “I came up here because I wanted to hike, but once I saw what was being accomplished, I ended up feeling really invested in the organization.”
Dara agreed. “I feel like I’ve been given so many opportunities in my life, and I’ve wasted a few. If I can do something to help a few people along the way while I’m doing what I love, why not?”

The volunteers take three-month shifts, and they run the organization itself, not only leading the treks but doing marketing, publicity, fundraising, budgeting, preparing the vegetarian meals that are hauled up the mountain on every trek – everything, in short, that is needed to make the program run. And somehow, for 15 years, they’ve made it work.

On the other end of the equation is a very different group of dedicated individuals – the founder, the teachers and the volunteers of EDELAC.

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Las Rosas lies far off the beaten track for most travelers to Guatemala’s second city. Here in one of the city’s poorest districts on the edge of town, dusty gravel streets cut into the hillsides where traditionally-dressed women try to sell tortillas and sliced fruit to passers-by.

The bus deposited me at the bottom of a long climb, but helpful neighbors pointed out the way. The Escuela de la Calle is probably the only thing for miles around that draws an occasional international volunteer or intern.
A teacher dressed in traditional traje was out front, her students listening attentively from a grassy jumble of stones. “We have the right to… education, health, a family,” child-painted murals declaimed from the whitewashed walls.

I had arrived.

Claudia Cortéz, the director of educational programs, took me on a guided tour, beginning with the second grade. She no sooner mentioned my name when the group burst into a carefully coordinated and practiced greeting. One youngster raised his hand eagerly.

“We’re so pleased to have you hear, and we hope you will enjoy your time at EDELAC,” he recited.
We went from class to class, the children obviously delighted with the opportunity to show off their English and pepper me with questions.

Then Henry, Lesbia, Damaris and three other sixth graders joined me in a different room for an interview, and I was able to see the stories behind those fresh faces, stories I won’t soon forget.

Soon it was time to let them go, but first they led me out to the playground, where each of them posed for me in front of their symbol from the Mayan calendar.

Next I met with Guadalupe, who told me the story of how the school was formed.

“I kept seeing children in the streets, taking drugs, sniffing glue, and I said to myself, I have to do something about this,” Guadalupe recalled.

He was a teacher at that time at a special school for young people who were working at jobs, and two of his colleagues, Ubaldo Ruiz and Miguel Quiroa, were feeling the same way. Together, they decided to quit their jobs and they began gathering the children like modern-day pied pipers, giving classes to the children in the streets. Soon they were joined by an American student, Michael Shorr, and they were four.

“It was a good job I gave up, and here I was earning nothing. But gave us a lot of energy to be with the children – the eyes of the children, the faces of the children, the need of the children, and to see the children so small, 6, 7 years old, sniffing glue, it was so painful to see, and nobody doing anything about it.”

The young men began doing outreach to raise money for a school and a shelter for the homeless children, contacting restaurants for donated food and Spanish schools for donations of money and volunteers. That’s how they found Gavin Barker, an Englishman who started working with the group to help find ways to raise money.

Eventually he hit upon the idea of forming a tour company to sponsor trips to destinations that at that time were virtually unknown to visitors to Quetzaltenango – places like Tajumulco and Lake Atitlan and Santiaguito volcano – and to donate the proceeds to the school. Guadalupe knew the trails, so they recruited volunteers and he taught them the routes, and they were on their way.

In the first years it was extremely challenging; they started out with no gear and no facilities, but eventually people donated gear, and word got around. More people started signing up for volunteer shifts.

Making matters more difficult was that the country was still at war and the people in the highlands were extremely suspicious of outsiders. Guadalupe remembers once when he arrived in a village with a group of trekkers and was surrounded by peasants with sticks and machetes.

“They thought we were guerilleros, and they didn’t want us there. Since I spoke Quiche I explained to them we were an organization that was supporting a school and invited them to come, but it was very difficult.”

Those days are long gone. Now with the help of funding from international organizations, they’ve built the new school in Las Rosas, but the bulk of their funding still comes from Quetaltrekkers.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Guadalupe, the last of the founders to remain and now at the helm of a vibrant school that promotes the preservation of the natural environment and Mayan cultural values, which are one and the same.

He hopes that the word about EDELAC and Quetzaltrekkers will spread and it can become a model for others who want to start alternative schools. I share with him that hope.

Here’s the Interview with Guadelupe Pos, and some photos from my afternoon with the kids.

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