Santa Isabel Ana Seton is located in Guatemala City, the capital of Guatemala. It opened its doors to children in 2006 and since then, Sor Ana Julia Hernandez has been our coordinator.
Out of the 390 students attending the school at the moment, 90 of these students are participating in our program. The monthly subsidies provided by our sponsors to these children are used to help them pay for the school fees; which is approximately a quarter of their monthly fees. The rest of the fees are covered by their parents.
Our coordinator and her assistant shared with us that to know whether a child qualify or not to be part of Children Incorporated, they have a prequalification program that consists of interviewing the parents once they express their interest to be part of CI, following of visitations to their homes, proof of income and to fill out some paper work to determine if the child qualifies for CI program.
Once that is completed, they start the process with us, sending all the documentation we required to make the enrollment possible.
Santa Isabel Ana Seton also counts with a feeding program sponsored by Children Incorporated, where the coordinator selects 25 children out of the 90 participants in Children Incorporated, to provide them with nutritious food.
The 90 children from the program will be rotated throughout the year in groups of 25, to make sure all them have the opportunity to benefit from this program too.
This school is located in the center of Guatemala City, and absorbs students from the periphery and red zone areas of the city (Zones of low income families, where common crime is always present). The school has a program that goes from K to 9thgrade, with about 400 children attending. They took a hit with enrollment during the pandemic, but students are back and the number is growing every year.
Santa Isabel Ana Seton School is a well care school, where children feel safe and enjoy a clean environment, conducted for education. They have ample space inside the compound, and it is all enclosed and protected. All children here seem happy and eager to learn in school, and all the ones on the CI program were very polite while we met them. They wanted to present a small program with culture and songs and dances from Guatemala for us, and we truly enjoy it!
The school has a series of buildings in a rather large plot of land right in the middle of the city, which is very unusual. There is one building dedicated to kindergarten, one building for primary education classes, and one building for middle school education. They also have other small buildings, and one has a kitchen, another with a facility for a food preparation skill program and for a garment making program, which were implemented with the support of Children Incorporated a few years ago. These two programs are very important as they prepare and provide such skills to the older children, as well as their parents and relatives, so that they can increment income with the skill. The skill training programs are a one year program of learning and on-hands practice for them to be completed, and they are very comprehensive and prepare the participants well.
CI monthly support at Santa Isabel Ana Seton is utilized to cover school fees for the children, and to support other needs like school supplies in the beginning of the year, sometimes shoes and clothing, mainly during the holidays, and when sponsors send additional gifts. CI does have a feeding program here to support 25 of the neediest children with a meal a day, and works quite well to motivate and provide some good nutrition to those children. This means that we will be providing one meal a day to seven more children every day at this school! This is great as the need to support and feed the children is big, and the feeding program helps to augment student attendance and participation. All records of children participation and finances are kept in a small office, and they were ready for us to see during our meeting, where we discussed reports, updates of the children, and communication with their sponsors. The program does well in that sense, and it was very little to request, as far as requirements and participation.
Yefiny and I had a meeting with all these programs described above, as well as the ones we are describing below. Yefiny and I requested to do a quick review of all financial records, and to discuss the volunteer coordinator’s procedures and see how they completed all requirements, or discuss if they had an issue to review, and of course test their knowledge of our program policies. We check on children’s record keeping, discuss the need for letters, children updates and to keep up with program adjustments. All affiliations were willing participants of the meetings, and openly and willingly shared and adjust to our requirements. As per our discussions, CI funding was specifically utilized as agreed and as indicated on accords and agreement letters signed previously. The personnel working with the program for implementation and operation, appears to be prepared, although there were a few situation indicated on the brief summary that needed adjustments and guidance from us to correct applications.