Pencils of Promise

Cerro de Oro (Guatemala)

Opened: January 2012

The name of this village, which means Hill of Gold, comes from an old Mayan legend!

When the Spaniards first occupied Guatemalan soil, the Tzu’Tujil native indigenous tribe buried all of their gold in the hill to hide it from the conquistadors. Cerro de Oro sits at the base of Volcano Atitlan, one of three volcanoes that surround the beautiful Lake Atitlan. Primarily coffee farmers and day laborers, the 3,000 Tzu’Tujil natives who occupy Cerro de Oro subsist on incomes of about $60 per month. Needless to say, construction resources are hard to come by, but Pencils of Promise and the community were determined to better the students’ education. Their previous school had been opened 13 years ago and existed in borrowed classrooms ever since.

Only recently was the community able to construct four additional classrooms for themselves, with some outside help. Even with this, they were still borrowing 5 classrooms, which they may not have been able to use for much longer. Furthermore, as we had typically seen in rural Sololá, these provisional rooms, made of wood and sheet metal, were far from ideal learning conditions. When it got too hot in the classroom, the teachers were forced to hold class outside, and when it rained too much, the children couldn’t enter the flooded classroom.

PoP knows that the sustainability of any school is dependent on having workable structures, so we planned a three-classroom project with Cerro de Oro. The community was enthusiastic and formed their Promise Committee, and we got started on building as soon as possible!

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