How reading changes lives

When Blanca Mactzul was a little girl, she would eye her grandfather’s magazines, longing to read one.

 

Her first book, Teo El Conejo, about a rabbit, was one that she swiped from him. “I used to take my book everywhere,” she recalls, “even to sleep.” Since 2020, Mactzul has been a Spark Reading teacher at the elementary school in Chajalajyá, where she sees the power of books, provided through the Guatemala Literacy Project, to motivate her students to become more invested in their learning.

 

“I was so happy to have so many materials to work with,” she says. “In other schools, we don’t have those resources.”

Rosa Acabal (right) was sure she’d have to drop out after she finished elementary school. Her mother, Leonicia Solís, had only finished third grade.

 

But the principal of her school told her about the Rise scholarships, and today, Acabal is in 10th grade studying tourism. She has received strong support from her mother, who raised her and her four siblings alone and built their home with her own hands.

 

Acabal’s goal is to finish high school and find a job so her mother can stop working in the fields.

Before school, Yurleny Teleguario sells street food such as pupusas and dobladas with her mother, María Magzul. Then, she heads to class, where she’s in 10th grade studying bookkeeping. “I dream of becoming a great entrepreneur,” she says.

 

Teleguario had to drop out of school when her father died and her mother got sick; her family lost their home. She heard about the Rise scholarships from a cousin. Her goal is to make enough money to buy her mom a new house.

 

“Education is very important to me,” she says, “because it gives us the opportunity to flourish and progress in life.”