Guatemala Insight Trip
In early February, four Rotarians from the Rotary Club of Evergreen and their spouses participated in an insight trip to Guatemala to view firsthand the work of Starfish One-by-One, an organization promoting indigenous girls’ education which has long been supported by the club. Jim and Anita Kreider, Janet and Fred Doyle, Rob Johnston and Pam Lepore, and Al and Barbara Steger spent several days in Panajachel and the other villages surrounding Lake Atitlan being briefed by Starfish staff, visiting Starfish’s new Impact School, and meeting some of the participants and their families in their homes.
Starfish was established in 2006 by Evergreen Rotarian Ted Ning and his wife, Connie, who joined the group on much of the tour. In its early years, Starfish was focused on mentoring indigenous girls and providing scholarships to encourage them to continue their education through high school. Girls in Guatemala seldom receive an education beyond the sixth grade, and are often married with children in their late teens. In January of 2017, the program took a new turn with the opening of its own school, an effort intended to improve not only retention, but also the quality of education for its participants.
Of particular interest during the trip was another recent development of the program, a separate scholarship fund to allow the best and the brightest of the girls graduating from the Starfish mentoring program, and eventually the Starfish Impact School, to attend university. The fund, called the Quetzal Fund, was also started by Ted and Connie Ning in 2015 when they recognized that many of the girls graduating from Starfish had dreams of continuing their education but were unable do so because of financial constraints. On one day during the insight trip the Rotarians traveled to Quetzaltenango to visit six of the Starfish graduates who are attending Rafael Landivar University, four in nursing and two in law.
Overall, the trip was highly successful as the Rotarians came away with a new understanding of the program and its needs. Of course, there was plenty of time interspersed to enjoy the sights, people, and foods of this wonderful country.
For more information on the Starfish program, please visit: http://starfish-impact.org/
To view more photos of the insight visit, check the photo album in the Archive: PhotoAlbums/2017-02-10 Guatemala Insight Trip