Today I went with Dania and her entire family, grandmother included, to a private high school in Zone 16 called Colegio el Sagrado Corazon de Jesus, an all girls school which specializes in teaching English. We were there to see her little sister Jessica take part in a presentation about youth in Guatemala and recreation for kids and present on her involvement with a drug prevention program at a local school.
When we walked onto campus I was shocked at how beautiful and clean it was since Simón and I had been going to the night school, also private, which was frankly unkempt. There was a beautiful tennis court, pool, bridge, and river.
After the graduation we sat outside and ate and I took pictures of the family on the bridge. Next, Dania, her father Estuardo (who is a part of the RDPG- and I went to Hotel Plaza in Zone 4 for an Immigration Workshop and Speaker Series put on by an organization called CEDMUC, or the Center for Community and Municipal Development. The speakers talked about immigration issues in the US and I was interested to see that Raul Molina, the executive director of CEDMUC, spoke about ICE raids, specifically the huge raid in Postville, Iowa on May 12, 2008.
We then we broke into groups and discussed solutions to different problems such as how to improve CEDMUC, how the Guatemalan government can help migrants, and in my group’s case, how we personally could improve conditions for Guatemalan migrants going north to the US.
The groups were chosen randomly so Dania, her father and I were in separate groups. Each group wrote their idea on large poster-size paper and presented our findings to the rest of the groups. My group’s ideas consisted of know-your-rights trainings here in Guatemala so they would be more prepared for when they are migrants in the US. Another idea was to skill-share meaning that if anyone knew English they could help teach the soon-to-be-migrant as much as possible. After the group presentations to my surprise we all got certificates of participation with our names on it!