Posted on January 6, 2010 - by marcob
2010 GPE Summer Project Description!
There are now two separate components to the GPE project in Guatemala, each with its own goals and volunteers. The first of these consists of an exchange program for two FSU graduate students from the College of Education, who will spend a total of six months at the Proesur campus of Universidad Del Valle de Guatemala (UVG). Our goal here is to better English teaching both at a University and community level, while providing FSU graduate students with the opportunity to teach abroad. It is GPE’s intention to make this a long-term commitment, and continue to send interested grad students every semester. Within this component of this year’s Guatemala project, there has been no change from our previous application.
As a second component to the initiative in Guatemala, GPE will send a team of six undergraduate volunteers who will work directly with a non-profit named ASOATITLAN. This is a local organization of young professionals, whose vision is to better the quality of life of the Guatemalan people by promoting collaborative learning on issues relevant to their communities. This is done through workshops and trainings, which are held on issues relevant to each community. These include environmental issues, active citizenship, information technology, social health issues and many more topics that are based on demand from the each community. However, due to a small-unpaid staff, and an overall lack of funding, ASOTITLAN finds its impact limited. In hopes to expanding the reach of their message, they reached out to GPE to form a partnership for the summer of 2010.
In Rwanda the GPE team of 5-6 undergraduate students plans to return to the Bukomero Primary School in Byimana to establish an educational advancement center that will provide computers and educational software as well as curriculum development for a faculty that faces overcrowded classes and serious lack of teaching-related resources. By doing so, both teachers and students will be able to significantly improve their proficiency in English as well as their overall academic achievement and growth.