Feeding bodies, nourishing minds

As a new student to Kids Alive’s Source of Hope School, 10-year-old Susana’s schooling experience is very different from her fellow students who had joined before the pandemic. While all the other students had started school in a classroom, Susana’s experience began with distance learning. It involved the 4th grader's parents going to her school weekly to pick up her study packet and drop off her schoolwork.

El Zapote (red marker) is 50 miles from Guatemala City (Courtesy Google Maps)

Susana is from El Zapote, where Source of Hope School provides education to at-risk children. Though only 50 miles from Guatemala’s capital, Guatemala City, El Zapote is in the mountains and hence described as “remote” and “isolated.” It is also why Kids Alive provides much-needed education to children like Susana in this area.On its surface, life in El Zapote seems normal, but in fact all is not well here. While its isolation protected El Zapote’s community from a severe incidence of COVID-19, it did not shield it from the economic downturn that followed on the heels of the pandemic. Already poor, the closing of and restrictions on businesses and other institutions added to the local people’s hardships.

School closures impacted students like Susana, who lives with her mother, siblings, and grandparents in a modest house made of concrete with a corrugated tin roof. “Learning from home is hard because I cannot ask my teachers for help, and a lot of the time, my mom cannot help either,” says Susana. But she also sees God working in her life and the lives of those around her. “I thank God that my family is healthy and that I can learn.”

Recently, Source of Hope reopened its doors to students. For two hours a week, each grade is allowed to come and study with their teachers. While this is still a far cry from a “normal” school day before COVID, we are thankful that we can make progress toward broader face-to-face and in-person contact!

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SCHOOLS

Kids Alive is responding to the COVID-19 pandemic by ensuring that our students stay on track and engaged in their education, even during these challenging times. We’re doing this through adapting lessons for distance learning, using online options, providing photocopied study resources delivered by our staff, facilitating telephone consultations with teachers, and organizing WhatsApp groups for parents to keep in touch and stay informed about their kids’ work. Our counselors are monitoring students and sending short videos to the families on how to handle stress and how to keep children active.

Many of our children come from families where there is now no income, and the children are at risk of hunger, malnutrition, and or getting food from unsafe sources. So we’re using the budgets normally allocated for school meals to help feed families of our kids and community members with basic non-perishable foods and, in some cases, cooked meals. And as we make home visits to our kids with food and educational material deliveries as well as tips on hygiene and disease prevention, we’re making the most of every opportunity to share the Gospel and bring hope!

Santo Domingo North School continues its food relief program to 77 families with the help of a local church. Job losses have left many families with no income during the COVID-19 pandemic.Our teachers are working hard to stay spiritually, emotionally, and academically engaged with our students. Despite the challenges imposed by the pandemic, students are working hard, and families enjoy sharing photos with their teachers via WhatsApp – the main way of communicating during this pandemic.

School directors Margaret and Juan meet weekly with the six other Kids Alive school directors to plan, share successes and ideas, and discuss spiritual and emotional care. The Kids Alive DR counseling staff have produced videos to guide parents in engaging with their children, keeping daily routines, and addressing other issues such as stress and anxiety.

The Kids Alive medical staff has also produced videos and flyers on COVID-19 prevention, use of personal protective equipment, and how to care for a sick family member. The country remains under government-enforced curfew, mandatory mask use, and restrictions on movement.