Yo’onik Learning Center: We need another scholarship student!

One more scholarship student!

We are happy to announce our new online fundraising relationship with DonorSee.  You can find our first funding petition here. 

In the video on DonorSee, Vicky talks about the importance of being able to sponsor another scholarship student to help with the after school homework support program. 

Vicky was the first scholarship student of Yo’onik. She was a bright 14 year old who we offered a study stiped in 2012 in exchange for helping tutor children in the after school educational support program in Maya Tsotsil.

Vicky continued with her studies and graduated from high school. She went on to coordinate the growing after school program and continues in that role to this day. She tutors the older elementary school children and supervises the middle and high school scholarship recipients who tutor the younger children. 

We’re all content that she’s decided she’d like to learn some new theoretical and practical skills to help her do her job better, and is now matriculated to begin studying at the university in August. 

The reason we decided to ask her to make this first video request is because she is the first one to recognize the need for another scholarship student to help with the increasing number of children who come to the center each week!

The Yo’onik scholarship and tutoring programs contribute to the community of Zinacantán in many ways. Besides children and adolescents improving their grades at school, they are learning to love learning and developing important social and leadership skills. Yo’onik integrates the local traditional culture into their educational program and encourages the children to be excited about continuing with their studies.  

We also teach children to respect the environment through practical applications, such as planting trees on deforested mountain sides, cleaning up the trash at the local lake, recycling plastic, and using an ecological (dry) latrine at the center.