Ruk’ux Scholarship: Ruk’ux means love in action

Greetings! I hope you are well and enjoying the holiday season! 

I’m writing you today because in the past you have donated to the Ruk’ux scholarship program, and I’d like to request that you consider supporting these very special students once again.  

The scholarship program began as support for the children of the artisans in the Just Apparel cooperative back in 2007. In addition to scholarships, it has since matured into an entrepreneurial and leadership training program for ten exceptional youth who enter as shy 13-year-olds and graduate as community leaders ready to be agents of change in Santiago Atitlán.  

In a recent conversation with the program coordinator Dolores Vasquez Reanda, she told me how much she loves running into previous scholarship recipients and finding out what they are doing now. She mentioned ten students by name, and I took notes!  

There are two primary school teachers, two physical education teachers, a radio show host, a bank teller, a nurse, an employee in a credit office, a health promoter that works with children and adults who have experienced violence, and an accountant who was hired by another Natik partner, ANADESA, after he did his professional service with them as a student.  

While listening to her talk with such animation and affection about the current lives of her previous students, I realized that in the flurry of daily activities, we’ve been remiss in not tracking the lives of all the students who’ve passed through this program. We’ve now promised ourselves to prioritize following up and documenting as many of the previous students as we can from now on.  

Santiago Atitlán is 98% Tz’utujil Maya; a population that is still deeply scarred by the violence of the 30-year Guatemalan civil war, the 1990 massacre of civilians, and a devastating landslide in 2005. Santiago has a chronically depressed economy that forces parents to take their children out of school at a young age to help support their families, thus perpetuating the generational cycle of poverty.  

Intuitively we all know that education provides expanded financial and experiential opportunities for the students, for their immediate families, and for future generations.  For families in Santiago, the gift of education is especially important to help turn around generations of poverty and exclusion.  

Your donation today will echo into the future. 

 🌿 🌺 🌿 Anita 

Executive Director