I met with Celine Dzul in Cholul, a small town on the outskirts on Mérida. Celine is the project director for “Edúcate” (educate yourself). The program targets local Mayan students that need support to complete the schooling necessary to attend University. Celine was a warm and engaging individual and I plan to return to meet the students:
We are here in Cholul, Edúcate starts in 2008, Cholul is a commissariat that is very close to Merida and many people from abroad come to spend some vacation seasons here. The live here, build here or they go back and only spend the winter season here, when it’s winter in where they live.
One of those people who worked, who is still working in the Bill Gates foundation, was here for a while and she came up with the idea of creating this project for the children of the domestic service employees, seeing how the very low scholar situation was, also for the moms, who didn’t have many resources to send the kids to school, so they take the task, this woman and other women, always foreigners, they take the task to create this project and get money among foreigner friends that would wish to do or to be part of the cause and that’s how they scholarships are being given to kids in Cholul, elementary, secondary and high school, the 3 school levels.
In what does this sponsorship program consists? The sponsor or benefactor gives a yearly donation and with that we pay the enrollment, uniforms, books, school supplies, they have a get-together at the beginning of the year, a small party, they are gifted with a book, for example take a look, this was their present for the end of the year, we give them a book, and a small detail, it can be a coat, a sweater, a pullover, a jacket.
That’s the get-together part from end of the year. So this is all included in the donation that the sponsor gives, that was in 2008 and it kept on going until 2010, 2012. The group starts to teach classes, math, physics, Spanish, English, we grew up with Mayan, they started with elementary school on Saturdays and now we also cover secondary and high school.
After 2012 the legal paperwork starts to be done, the association is legally formed, and in 2014 the association is given a registry that the Mexican government demands, it’s called CLUNI, so with the CLUNI, we can participate in grant applications to get public funding, and last year we did for the first time and we got supported. We got a resource to make a tutorship program, much more complete this time, with psychologists and workshops and now we are trying to do the same, this year we try again and we are making another project to work with psychologists.
Plus we make art workshops, we look for other associations that want to collaborate with us and in summer season, for example, that the kids are on vacation we make art projects, trying to find activities for them in their idle time, when they have no activities, basically what is what we are doing.
Currently we have 53 students with a scholarship, 18 in elementary school, 18 in secondary school and 17 in high school. It varies conforming to the ones getting out of high school, sometimes more get in elementary school or in secondary school, that changes, it depends a lot on the sponsors we have, sometimes they don’t want to support a kid in high school, because the yearly cost is a bit higher than the one for a kid in elementary school, we usually have sponsors for these kids, even so the desirable thing is to support the older kids, that are the ones who want to go to university.
Tell me about the students who are benefited from the help of the project.
Well, look, they are children from native people of Cholul, economically speaking it’s very complicated, the situation, most are children of very young women who got pregnant very young, that don’t have studies, that are working in domestic service or at some store or they sell food at their home. So the economic situation is not very good, there’s no father or if there is he is a construction worker, electrician or a plumber. There’s a big alcoholism problem, some family problems inside the house, there are many abandoned women, divorced or separated and basically that is the very difficult condition that they face, sometimes the kid in secondary or high school has to drop it to get to work. It’s usually families with 3-4 kids so that’s even harder.
Do you think the project has success?
Yes, completely, we currently have 18 kids attending university, that were already in “Edúcate”, that went through it, graduated from high school and are attending university, this year they must finish, a young man should graduate.
We have the boy who is studying at the Concal technological, another one in the technological university, we have some in UADY, the university, the school that is most, let’s say, known in a local level, we have kids also in UADY high school, so yes, it is successful. After 8 years of work we start to see results.
Very well, have you seen changes in the community, thanks to the project?
But of course! Because we are very close to the moms and they are supporting us, we are working along them to impulse the children, the moms already have the idea that the kids must make it to the university that it is the ideal way to be able to, earn better money, to live better. So yes, there are changes, we think them are the main push for the kids.
Now, for example, we are working on the subject of sexual education, because this year there are 3 pregnant girls at secondary school, who already dropped off and in the local high school we also have pregnant girls, one of them has a scholarship with “Edúcate”. So this is a little problem that we have been perceiving for some years now, but that we haven’t done anything specific, we joined together with an association that is called “BAI foundation” open arms for the Spanish letters, and they are specialized in handling HIV/AIDS, pregnancy, reproductive health, disease prevention and now we are doing a workshop, we invite moms and dads of our kids with scholarships and with them we start a workshop to then move on to the students.
This is the same, this is another, we may not see the result now, but in 2 or 3 years, all this information that we are providing must have results.
What are your plans this year?
We must first nail down the tutorship program, the sponsorship one is already moving on its own, we have a base of sponsors who want to keep supporting their students and this program is doing very well, it’s consolidated.
On the counseling side, if we don’t have money, there are no teachers, so we want to consolidate this counseling program, to get the fund that will guarantee permanently, to be able to achieve the long term result, we need to continue non-stop, because what happens is, we suddenly stop, then we start again, so that makes it that the result will be seen a bit more far away, however the effort is being made, it continues on.
So the project is to consolidate the tutorship program, to nail a psychological department, the people, the students, the families need psychological support, they need to work with the self-esteem, loving themselves, people have almost no self-esteem, they consider themselves of very little value and that prevents them from having more possibilities in the future.
Meaning, their goals aren’t, let’s say bigger, so that’s the area that we want to nail too, the psychological part.
And we would like to work with art, now we are establishing some, president Katrin is making negotiations with some teachers living here, who are Canadian, former teachers, they are retired now so we are trying to have an approach with public schools in Canada, that can also support us, so that we can support each other. To get the funding to make an art project and for those schools to come, at some point, the students can come to spend time and to know the project.
Those are the fields that we want to work on.
What are the most important issues in education for you?
In Mexico, the education is very poor in our country, the educative system is going through a crisis, and unfortunately the union problem is affecting the teacher’s formation, first, now there are a lot of teachers who are in the classroom just to get paid, for a salary, teachers who are already tired, who don’t have the spirit to teach anymore and many who don’t have the vocation of service to teach either.
The classrooms in public school, I think also in private ones, but the groups of the classrooms are of 45, here in Cholul, 45 or 48 kids in a classroom and it’s very hard for a teacher to handle such a group, especially in secondary school where the kids are very, they have lots of energy and want to do things, and to keep them locked in, the teaching is very traditionalist still.
I feel that more technology is needed, to make it attractive, so the kids are more dynamic, more dynamic classes. I feel there are many, many problems, so the educative level is not so good, when a kid finishes here, for example, graduates and wants to enter the university, they hardly get in, they don’t get good scores on the admission test, meaning their preparation is not the right one.
That is majorly the goal of our afternoon lessons, the tutorships, to reinforce or give support to what is given at school and teach them that again. Because if a teacher is standing in front of 40 kids explaining, they are not even paying attention to him, and it’s not the same to work in a personalized way, to check that the student is really understanding what you are explaining, that simply address the subject or many times they don’t even do this.
So there are really lots of problems, lots of vices, corruption, those are the problems really.
School principals sometimes don’t do anything for the school, they are sitting on their desks sometimes, there are some principles who are very good, at school you notice, like in everything, you notice the government, who is governing, who rules, you realize what they are doing, how they are working, when the principal is absent or doesn’t want to do anything, doesn’t seek for alternatives, nothing happens, such is the situation.
Yes, it is a little complicated, there’s not a single factor, there are many, and now the kids have also external factors, social media usage, too much information they receive from the media, that sometimes they don’t know how to handle well, or they don’t use it for good.
The problem here, well, the problem we have with the students is that when they finish high school the family doesn’t want to support them anymore, so that is what is missing, to be able to link them with someone who pays the university, that’s a subject still to be worked.
We are here in Cholul, Edúcate starts in 2008, Cholul is a commissariat that is very close to Merida and many people from abroad come to spend some vacation seasons here. The live here, build here or they go back and only spend the winter season here, when it’s winter in where they live.
One of those people who worked, who is still working in the Bill Gates foundation, was here for a while and she came up with the idea of creating this project for the children of the domestic service employees, seeing how the very low scholar situation was, also for the moms, who didn’t have many resources to send the kids to school, so they take the task, this woman and other women, always foreigners, they take the task to create this project and get money among foreigner friends that would wish to do or to be part of the cause and that’s how they scholarships are being given to kids in Cholul, elementary, secondary and high school, the 3 school levels.
In what does this sponsorship program consists? The sponsor or benefactor gives a yearly donation and with that we pay the enrollment, uniforms, books, school supplies, they have a get-together at the beginning of the year, a small party, they are gifted with a book, for example take a look, this was their present for the end of the year, we give them a book, and a small detail, it can be a coat, a sweater, a pullover, a jacket.
That’s the get-together part from end of the year. So this is all included in the donation that the sponsor gives, that was in 2008 and it kept on going until 2010, 2012. The group starts to teach classes, math, physics, Spanish, English, we grew up with Mayan, they started with elementary school on Saturdays and now we also cover secondary and high school.
After 2012 the legal paperwork starts to be done, the association is legally formed, and in 2014 the association is given a registry that the Mexican government demands, it’s called CLUNI, so with the CLUNI, we can participate in grant applications to get public funding, and last year we did for the first time and we got supported. We got a resource to make a tutorship program, much more complete this time, with psychologists and workshops and now we are trying to do the same, this year we try again and we are making another project to work with psychologists.
Plus we make art workshops, we look for other associations that want to collaborate with us and in summer season, for example, that the kids are on vacation we make art projects, trying to find activities for them in their idle time, when they have no activities, basically what is what we are doing.
Currently we have 53 students with a scholarship, 18 in elementary school, 18 in secondary school and 17 in high school. It varies conforming to the ones getting out of high school, sometimes more get in elementary school or in secondary school, that changes, it depends a lot on the sponsors we have, sometimes they don’t want to support a kid in high school, because the yearly cost is a bit higher than the one for a kid in elementary school, we usually have sponsors for these kids, even so the desirable thing is to support the older kids, that are the ones who want to go to university.
Tell me about the students who are benefited from the help of the project.
Well, look, they are children from native people of Cholul, economically speaking it’s very complicated, the situation, most are children of very young women who got pregnant very young, that don’t have studies, that are working in domestic service or at some store or they sell food at their home. So the economic situation is not very good, there’s no father or if there is he is a construction worker, electrician or a plumber. There’s a big alcoholism problem, some family problems inside the house, there are many abandoned women, divorced or separated and basically that is the very difficult condition that they face, sometimes the kid in secondary or high school has to drop it to get to work. It’s usually families with 3-4 kids so that’s even harder.
Do you think the project has success?
Yes, completely, we currently have 18 kids attending university, that were already in “Edúcate”, that went through it, graduated from high school and are attending university, this year they must finish, a young man should graduate.
We have the boy who is studying at the Concal technological, another one in the technological university, we have some in UADY, the university, the school that is most, let’s say, known in a local level, we have kids also in UADY high school, so yes, it is successful. After 8 years of work we start to see results.
Very well, have you seen changes in the community, thanks to the project?
But of course! Because we are very close to the moms and they are supporting us, we are working along them to impulse the children, the moms already have the idea that the kids must make it to the university that it is the ideal way to be able to, earn better money, to live better. So yes, there are changes, we think them are the main push for the kids.
Now, for example, we are working on the subject of sexual education, because this year there are 3 pregnant girls at secondary school, who already dropped off and in the local high school we also have pregnant girls, one of them has a scholarship with “Edúcate”. So this is a little problem that we have been perceiving for some years now, but that we haven’t done anything specific, we joined together with an association that is called “BAI foundation” open arms for the Spanish letters, and they are specialized in handling HIV/AIDS, pregnancy, reproductive health, disease prevention and now we are doing a workshop, we invite moms and dads of our kids with scholarships and with them we start a workshop to then move on to the students.
This is the same, this is another, we may not see the result now, but in 2 or 3 years, all this information that we are providing must have results.
What are your plans this year?
We must first nail down the tutorship program, the sponsorship one is already moving on its own, we have a base of sponsors who want to keep supporting their students and this program is doing very well, it’s consolidated.
On the counseling side, if we don’t have money, there are no teachers, so we want to consolidate this counseling program, to get the fund that will guarantee permanently, to be able to achieve the long term result, we need to continue non-stop, because what happens is, we suddenly stop, then we start again, so that makes it that the result will be seen a bit more far away, however the effort is being made, it continues on.
So the project is to consolidate the tutorship program, to nail a psychological department, the people, the students, the families need psychological support, they need to work with the self-esteem, loving themselves, people have almost no self-esteem, they consider themselves of very little value and that prevents them from having more possibilities in the future.
Meaning, their goals aren’t, let’s say bigger, so that’s the area that we want to nail too, the psychological part.
And we would like to work with art, now we are establishing some, president Katrin is making negotiations with some teachers living here, who are Canadian, former teachers, they are retired now so we are trying to have an approach with public schools in Canada, that can also support us, so that we can support each other. To get the funding to make an art project and for those schools to come, at some point, the students can come to spend time and to know the project.
Those are the fields that we want to work on.
What are the most important issues in education for you?
In Mexico, the education is very poor in our country, the educative system is going through a crisis, and unfortunately the union problem is affecting the teacher’s formation, first, now there are a lot of teachers who are in the classroom just to get paid, for a salary, teachers who are already tired, who don’t have the spirit to teach anymore and many who don’t have the vocation of service to teach either.
The classrooms in public school, I think also in private ones, but the groups of the classrooms are of 45, here in Cholul, 45 or 48 kids in a classroom and it’s very hard for a teacher to handle such a group, especially in secondary school where the kids are very, they have lots of energy and want to do things, and to keep them locked in, the teaching is very traditionalist still.
I feel that more technology is needed, to make it attractive, so the kids are more dynamic, more dynamic classes. I feel there are many, many problems, so the educative level is not so good, when a kid finishes here, for example, graduates and wants to enter the university, they hardly get in, they don’t get good scores on the admission test, meaning their preparation is not the right one.
That is majorly the goal of our afternoon lessons, the tutorships, to reinforce or give support to what is given at school and teach them that again. Because if a teacher is standing in front of 40 kids explaining, they are not even paying attention to him, and it’s not the same to work in a personalized way, to check that the student is really understanding what you are explaining, that simply address the subject or many times they don’t even do this.
So there are really lots of problems, lots of vices, corruption, those are the problems really.
School principals sometimes don’t do anything for the school, they are sitting on their desks sometimes, there are some principles who are very good, at school you notice, like in everything, you notice the government, who is governing, who rules, you realize what they are doing, how they are working, when the principal is absent or doesn’t want to do anything, doesn’t seek for alternatives, nothing happens, such is the situation.
Yes, it is a little complicated, there’s not a single factor, there are many, and now the kids have also external factors, social media usage, too much information they receive from the media, that sometimes they don’t know how to handle well, or they don’t use it for good.
The problem here, well, the problem we have with the students is that when they finish high school the family doesn’t want to support them anymore, so that is what is missing, to be able to link them with someone who pays the university, that’s a subject still to be worked.