In the early eighties Emeldina and the people from her village also fled to the mountains. ¨Most of us thought that we would never set foot on our lands again¨, remembers Emeldina. It was the time of the bloody killings by the paramilitary that later became known as the scorched earth politics implemented by the generals Lucas Garcia an Efraín Ríos Montt.

After having lived for over a year in the mountains the groups fled to Mexico. Here they started to organize their children's education. People in the camps with the highest degrees of education (mostly secondary school) were approached. Also Emeldina: a big group walked to her house and asked her if she wanted to teach to prime school kids.

“I had no idea what I was doing”

Emeldina had no experience at all and no idea how to teach. ¨It was like having to cross a river without being able to swim. Sometimes I was sleeping in front of the kids because I had no idea what I was doing.¨

COMADEP had organized some courses on teaching in 1982 but it was until 1994 that the teachers had organized themselves in an organization of rural teachers, named AMERG. This group started helping with a special project: professionalizing teachers to obtain their degrees.

After teaching for two years without a degree in the refugee camps in Mexico, he participated in the course. For Sebastian participating ment a big personal change. ¨First we were teaching illegally because we didn´t have a degree. Now we know the methodology. Our whole manner of teaching has changed. It gave me more consciousness. I started asking myself questions: Why am I teaching? What are my goals?¨

"We let them feel they´re worth it"

And it seems that when a teacher knows in which direction he is heading, this also stimulates the student. ¨First many children were bored and disorientated. Now we are more like a guide. We let our students investigate themselves or work in smaller groups. We let them feel they´re worth it. In this way they learn to be more independent.¨

And the children are passing on this way of thinking. Sometimes Sebastian is just an observer and asks the higher grade students to teach younger children. This has an important social aspect: ¨It takes away their fear of speaking in large groups and makes the kids more confident.¨

The educacional situation has improved in these rural areas but still Guatemala´s government isn´t fully acknowledging the teachers that graduated with the project. The teachers still don't have a contract and get paid only once every three months and sometimes every six months. The little children may have a more firm base for the future, Guatamala´s teachers keep in an insecure position. They still await their acknowledgment for their good work.

This program, professionalizing the teachers to obtain their title, is a good example of what is possible between NGO´s and the participants. These participants are refugees who lived in the Mexican camps, in their majority indigenous people. Most of them hadn't finished primary school and started in the project without any previous experience. COMADEP discovered the capabilities of these indigenous men and women and started training them, until the project of professionalizing the teachers was started in Mexico in 1994. The work was continued in Guatemala when the refugees returned and it took until 1998 until all of them had obtained their degree. Now they are working in different villages, not only in Petén but also in the states of Huehuetenango, and in the South Coast. The professionalized teachers are working for the Ministry of Education and are teaching over 10.000 children of schools in rural areas.

Read about the work of the educational technician