YO’ONIK
Everyone Teaches, Everyone Learns
Natik provides support to the Yo’onik Learning Center in Zinacantán for study stipends and educational workshops.
Every year, many students in Zinacantán drop out of school after the sixth grade because their families cannot afford to continue their education. Yo’onik identifies extraordinary students and helps them offset the additional expenses of studying beyond primary school. The study stipends also assist families in compensating for the loss of income that occurs when a child doesn't leave school to work.
These exceptional youth learn valuable leadership skills through the training and supervision involved in helping tutor younger children. As a result, the younger students receive cultural affirmation, while the older students develop essential organizational, administrative, and creative teaching skills.
Maya Tsotsil is spoken at home but schools teach in Spanish, so the early years of primary school are critical for indigenous children.
The Yo’onik tutoring program helps children in K-6 improve their grades in school. Both the teen scholarship recipients and the children develop important social and leadership skills in the municipality of Zinacantán, Chiapas, Mexico. They cultivate vegetable gardens, learn about recycling, and participate in reforestation efforts. Yo’onik integrates the local traditional culture into its educational program and motivates children and adolescents to continue their studies.
The participants do well in school and as they grow up they'll harvest the fruit and lumber from the trees they planted in their youth. They will also pass on the wisdom of land stewardship and environmental care to their children.
Natik identifies and secures resources for Yo’onik to offer classes and workshops. We’ve helped finance workshops in photography, videography, technology, English, organic gardening, composting latrines, low-smoke stoves, and the cultivation of nutritious backyard crops.
“Grandmother Maria did not have the opportunity to study so she went every day to the mountains to shepherd her sheep and cultivate the land. One day she said, ‘if you have the dream and the desire to work, I will give you my cornfield to construct the Yo'onik house to gather the children.’ “ Xunka, Coordinator of the Yo’onik Learning Center
Yo’onik is a dynamic learning center where fun and laughter are central strategies to keep the children engaged in studies in Spanish, a language that is rarely (if ever) spoken at home.