03 Mar 2020
Over the last 2 years our Guatemalan partner has been working in El Hato’s new school. For 6 months this school went through a massive reconstruction. This building used to be an abandoned public school on a neighbouring lot of Finca El Hato, in Barberena. When our Guatemalan partner bought the lot along with the building, they decided it was best to rebuild the school for the local children. After much effort from local workers they enthusiastically announced the opening of the new School to the public.
The School has been functioning as a public school for over ten years now and it educates over 400 children from the age of 5 to 18. It offers morning, afternoon and evening classes to maximize the use of the building and accommodate everyone’s schedule. Most of the students are children of coffee workers or pickers at the farm but it also welcomes any other children from the area.
On Friday afternoon and over the weekend the school building and its surrounding fields are used for a coffee technical school. This is a 2-year program that students can do in the final years of high school or is open to anyone that has finished high school and wants to learn more about coffee growing and processing.
During the 2 years students learn everything from how to create a healthy and thriving nursery to cupping coffees at a basic level. The idea behind this program is that once graduated from this technical school, these young adults will find a good placement at a farm in the area or will keep farming their family farms.
Currently they have 39 teenagers from the area as well as students that come from other parts of Guatemala, as it is one of only 4 coffee technical schools available in the country. The goal is to be an attractive school for the best students from all over the country who want to come and learn about growing and processing coffees – to later find employment in the coffee industry and/or produce their own coffee.
With the migration to North America and to bigger cities, coffee producing regions are being left with a shortage of young adults interested in the coffee industry. However, we believe that preparing them properly for the field will help them get better jobs and therefore provide a bigger motivation to stay in their local towns with more possibilities and prosperity in coffee.
We hope that one day we will be able to offer scholarships for students coming from other regions so that they can stay at the facilities over the 3 days rather than travel back and forth. At the moment they have 39 students, of which 5 are on scholarships. The cost of running the school is roughly US$24,000 annually.
With the help from Toby’s Estate, they could offer the program to more students free of cost and get some more technical gadgets in order to make this program more inviting and interesting for millennials.