When COVID affects the community: The response of a needs-based private school in Guatemala

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 has caused a global pandemic requiring localized responses. Much of the locally based support comes from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that serve a particular community. In this paper, we present a case study of an educational and nutritional NGO functioning in a semi-urban town in Guatemala. We discuss how Education for the Children and the school it manages, The School of Hope, have addressed food insecurity, educational challenges, and lack of social support during the pandemic. We suggest that such responses should include three main aspects. First, the response must be overwhelmingly local. Second, local cultural values, as well as political and economic constraints, must be centralized in the response plan. Third, and possibly of greatest importance, local responses to crises must be adaptable. We believe that this case study presents ideas and suggestions that various organizations can consider and adapt to their own localized responses.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19 response
• non-governmental organizations
• Guatemala
• community support
• nutritional support
• educational support
• case study

While COVID-19, the disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2; World Health Organization [WHO], 2020) is a global pandemic, affecting nearly every country in the world (Center for Disease Control [CDC], 2020), the response to the disease has necessarily been localized. In the USA, for example, it has been governors, county legislatures, and city mayors who have taken the lead on implementing necessary public health policies and practices (National League of Cities [NLC], 2020). These policies and practices have included stay-at-home orders, restrictions on group gatherings, and the requirement of personal protective equipment (PPE) when in public spaces. Localized responses to a global pandemic are, according to public health officials, the best way to reduce the strain of COVID-19 on the world’s healthcare systems (Flatten the Curve, 2020), and they are occurring everywhere around the globe, requiring the effort and support of governments, nonprofit organizations, for-profit businesses, and schools.

In the case study that follows, about a locally focused educational and nutritional non-governmental organization (NGO), we suggest that NGOs can have a positive impact in the communities they serve by focusing on three issues. First, the response to COVID-19 should be locally based and focused on many, if not most, aspects of the NGO’s response. Second, the local cultural values and economic constraints of the community must be considered when response plans are developed. Third, and perhaps most importantly, local responses to this pandemic and other similar crises must be flexible; changes in timelines, necessities, and aims are guaranteed to occur in such a context.

Education for the Children and The School of Hope

Education for the Children (EFTC) is a nonprofit, NGO that functions in the municipality of Jocotenango, Guatemala. Jocotenango has an official 2020 population of 21,463 people (Instituto Nacional de Estadistica [INE], 2020), and is in the department (comparable to a state in the USA) of Sacatepéquez, which has a 2020 population of 376,111 (INE, 2020). According to official government data, the vast majority of Jocotenango are Ladinos (those who do not make a strong claim to Maya indigenous heritage), with only approximately 1700 residents claiming Maya indigenous heritage, and most residents of Jocotenango live in a semi-urban setting. Many of the residents of Jocotenango struggle financially, making it difficult for them to meet their families’ basic needs.

EFTC (www.eftcusa.org), which has fundraising offices and is a legally registered charity in both the USA and the UK, runs and financially maintains The School of Hope (La Escuela de Esperanza) in Jocotenango. The School of Hope (TSH) is a private school for students in grades prepa (similar to kindergarten in the USA) through 3^rd básico (similar to ninth grade in the USA). For the 2020 academic year, the school had 475 students in these grades attending classes full time, plus an additional 213 students who have graduated from TSH and are financially supported by TSH while attending the equivalents of high school, vocational school, or university.

While public education in Guatemala is technically compulsory and free, the associated costs (e.g., textbooks, uniforms) and potential lost labor of children, who could be working to help support their families rather than in school, make a formal education, let alone a high-quality education, an impossible dream for many families in Guatemala. In fact, Guatemala’s education system is the most inequitable in all of Latin America and the Caribbean (Ness & Linn, 2013; Poppema, 2009). This has led to a division in the education system, where wealthy families are able to send their children to high-quality private schools, while poor and middle-class families are forced to send their children to underfunded and inadequate public schools with underqualified teachers – if those families are able to send their children to school at all (Batz & Caballeros, 2019).

The mission of EFTC and TSH is to break the cycle of poverty in Jocotenango, Guatemala, via education and empowerment. In order to do that, each of the students at TSH attends the school tuition and fee free. In fact, because 100% of the costs of running the school are covered via personal donations, public fundraisers, and grants, TSH if able to admit students from the local Jocotenango based entirely on need. In addition to providing these students with a high-quality education, EFTC and TSH provide students who attend the school a nutritious snack and a healthy lunch every day (which, for some of the students, is the only healthy food they receive each school day), as well as access to a full-time nurse and full-time psychologist on staff, career counseling, arts, and sports education, and after school activities. The school also provides support to the families of the students via opportunities like parenting workshops, healthcare support, and housing help.

For more than 15 years, EFTC and TSH have been providing these services – and learning how to provide them in consistently more effective and culturally appropriate ways. The school opened its doors for the 2020 academic year on January 13th, with high expectations for the year ahead. But, as SARS-CoV-2 has spread around the world causing more than 2 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and at least 150,000 related deaths (as of 17 April 2020), Guatemala as a country, Jocotenango as a city, and The School of Hope as an organization have not been spared. The school is currently closed, with students receiving educational support remotely from their teachers and the families of the students receiving nutritional support via TSH from local providers.

COVID-19 in Guatemala

The first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Guatemala was announced on 13 March 2020, brought to Guatemala by a man returning to his home after a visit to Italy. Even before that first confirmed case, Guatemala had banned travel from all countries in Europe, as well as China, Korea, and Iran (Menchu, 2020a). Two days later, travel was stopped to Guatemala from the USA and Canada (Menchu, 2020b). The first death from COVID-19 in Guatemala occurred on 15 March 2020 (El Ministerio de Salud Pública y Asistencia Social [MSPAS], 2020a). After this, the Guatemalan government cancelled public events, including Holy Week celebrations, and gatherings of more than 100 people, and required all schools and universities to close their doors (El Ministerio de Salud Pública y Asistencia Social [MSPAS], 2020b). On 21 March 2020, the Guatemala government instituted a curfew and prohibited all travel – even between different departments in Guatemala.

These policies and procedures, while intended to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in Guatemala, are having a significant impact on the economy and way of life in the country. For decades, Guatemala has depended upon an informal economy (Villelabeitia, 2000). While this informality has always had negative consequences (such as a severe lack of labor rights; Cuffe, 2019), the UN estimates that nearly 70% of Guatemala’s workforce is employed informally (teleSUR, 2015). The country’s reliance on an informal economy puts the people who live there at particular risk for economic crises during the pandemic (Caribbean News Global, 2020; Daboub, 2020), and this is exacerbated by the governmental curfew. A large proportion of the population supports themselves financially through informal means such as selling products door-to-door or in parks, as food and drink vendors on street corners, as shoe shiners, in sex work, as informal taxi and transportation drivers, or myriad other informal occupations. The curfew of 4:00 pm – 4:00 am (Embajada de los Estados Unidos en Guatemala, 2020), in addition to restrictions on public gatherings and unnecessary travel, has left many people in Guatemala unable to earn the money they require for basic needs, such as food, electricity, and healthcare.

COVID-19 in Jocotenango

COVID-19 has had a drastic impact on the substantially underserved town of Jocotenango, Guatemala. Jocotenango has traditionally struggled with issues such as food insecurity and violence against women. Despite increased development over the last few years, Jocotenango is composed of several “red zones” where crime, food insecurity, extreme poverty, and domestic violence rates are high. The people who live in these zones work in the vast unofficial economy, living hand to mouth. As these jobs are unregulated, the workers are left financially unprotected in this global pandemic. The government has scrambled to offer relief to citizens through a ten-program approach, two of these programs being food baskets for 200,000 families and monthly bonuses of Q1,000 ($133.33) for a period of three months for 2 million of the poorest residents (Coronado, 2020). The town mayors have been called on to organize additional food hampers for their residents in critical need as well as submit a list of prioritized residents for reception of the bonus. However, while small municipal food hampers are being distributed, conflicting qualifications have caused mayors to stall on indicating who should receive the bonus. The federal food hampers have not yet reached Jocotenango, as the majority were dispersed in Guatemala City. Sixty days into Guatemala’s State of Emergency, white flags, a sign of acute lack of food, are visible hanging from houses across the town.

Additionally, an average of 55 cases of violence against women have been reported per day since the curfew was implemented on 22 March, which is a decrease from an average of 155 before the State of Emergency began (Pocasangre, 2020). Local leaders believe that this decrease is the result of the delayed implementation of adapted reporting routes during the lockdown. Even with this decrease, Jocotenango is among the two municipalities in the department of Sacatepequez with the highest rates of domestic abuse reported since the curfew was announced (Nueva Era; Noticias, n.d.). If domestic violence is reported, authorities will visit the house to confirm the claim, and then the assailant will be charged at a later date, when systems normalize. This process leaves victims, often women and children, trapped in their homes with their abuser for the time being.

COVID-19 at The School of Hope

The 688 students either enrolled in TSH or in the organization’s Higher Education Scholarship program have been profoundly affected by the COVID-19 crisis. All public transportation has been suspended since 14 March, hindering their ability to work and travel to TSH for material and food disbursements. Although the majority of the student population live in Jocotenango, EFTC serves students in several municipalities of Sacatepequez and the neighboring department of Chimaltenango. The majority of parents, and students who contribute financially to the family expenses via part-time work, have lost at least one family income, if not all household income due to the implementation of the curfew and other government restrictions put in place to halt the spread of the virus. The main jobs that the families of TSH hold include construction, housekeeping, selling in the outdoor markets, peddling goods on the streets, and tourism-related work. These jobs have all come to a halt with the outbreak, and the vast majority of these employees are not legally contracted, meaning they are not entitled to any unemployment benefits.

Eleven months of each year, the students at TSH receive nutritious snacks and lunch, which makes up the majority of the healthy calories they consume each week. The combination of the school closure and the drastic decline in household incomes have left students and their families critically food insecure. On the education front, the student body will struggle to meet the academic year’s outcome goals after the reduction in educational time this year, especially given the massive contextual challenges they face even without a global health pandemic. For those students on scholarship to high schools and universities, the school closures have been especially detrimental, as they are expected to have the same access to resources as their wealthier peers, including Internet, tablets, and computers. For graduating high schoolers and university students, they must stream lectures, participate in online meetings for group projects, and complete and turn in assignments online – but these challenges put the students’ abilities to graduate on time at risk. A lack of understanding about the socioeconomic limitations that many students face may result in them failing the quarter, and could place them at risk of repeating the school year in 2021.

EFTC’s local response

The original plan

When TSH closed on 16 March, the immediate plan was to provide three weeks of homework in a work packet that would focus on reviewing the outcomes recently learned, and a small bag of food staples to help replace the nutrition program upon which the students rely. With scholarship students, the focus was on providing support remotely and helping them achieve as much as possible, even with the limited access to technology and resources. At this point, the closure was scheduled to last for only three weeks, and the economic challenges of our families had not yet worsened dramatically. With only a short closure, scholarship students would be able to make up the hit to their grades later on in the academic year, and TSH would be able to extend the school year by a few weeks, resulting in no loss of academic time.

Needs that became apparent

As government restrictions increased, and the majority of families loose all or part of their income, it became clear that the closure, and TSH’s response to it, would have to adapt. The primary need that soon became apparent was food aid. In only one week, the majority of the student population had become critically food insecure due to the curfew, prohibition of public transport, and closure of non-essential businesses. The second need we encountered was continuing education, including teaching new material rather than simply reviewing previously mastered outcomes; TSH staff realized they needed to provide continuing education for the students at the school as well as increase support for the scholarship students. The third need was continuing social services, such as medical and psychological support remotely as well as addressing the heightened risk of domestic violence in an already extremely vulnerable population.

Nutrition

The first priority was to organize monthly supplies to the 385 families in the program. Each disbursement costs EFTC Q200 ($25) per family, for a total of 9,625. USD Because EFTC and TSH are now providing food for the entire family and not just the students at the school, this has put a large strain on the nutrition budget, requiring significant fundraising. The bags of food include diverse dry goods that align with the cultural diet, as well as cleaning and hygiene supplies. The second distribution of these basic supplies was originally organized for the second week of April, 1 month into the closure. This effort was hindered by increased government restrictions, including the prohibition of travel between departments and the closure to nonresidents of the city of Antigua, the nearest commercial center to Jocotenango. Staff had to make several adaptations to the original plan, regarding providers, pick-up points, and other details in order to work within each new restriction. In addition, the local grocery store from whom the goods were purchased had some late obstacles regarding supply and time limitations due to the curfew. However, with a lot of resilience and teamwork, the food was distributed on the desired schedule. The third disbursement, originally scheduled for 5 May 2020, was moved up by 4 days due to the number of families contacting EFTC because they had completely run out of food and did not know what else to do to feed their families. With the help of three local partners who provided the supplies, the food and cleaning supplies were handed out to all 385 families before 4 May. The families also received one facemask, donated by a local business. Masks are obligatory, and have been in Guatemala for the last three weeks, making these masks a valuable resource for our families for the times they must leave their homes.

Education

Due to the need to continue structured learning throughout the school closure, staff at TSH launched a response as diverse as their student body. This included a Facebook page for parents to access once a week on their basic smartphones. Homework is posted each Monday in the form of a JPG because it is more conducive to the technology. Students copy down the assignments and complete them in their notebooks. Complementary teaching videos are posted weekly, along with motivational videos designed to keep the students’ spirits up. These can include teachers reading to them, showing them how to make a toy out of supplies found in their house, or teaching them how to cook new recipes with the food provided in the food hampers. For those students whose parents do not have access to Facebook, the homework is either texted to them each week, posted outside of the school for parents who live nearby to photograph with their phones, and, for a handful of students who live too far away, the homework is delivered to their door by a TSH staff member. Parents who generally have a very limited amount of formal education have developed networks of their older children, extended family members, and even sometimes use neighbors to help the students finish their homework.

Social support

Phone consults for medical issues, as well as mental health support via the phone, have continued throughout the closure in order to provide TSH’s most at-risk students with continued support. New health cases have been opened, with all recommendations and follow-up completed over the phone instead of in the school. In order to meet the need of the increased risk of domestic violence, mainly against women and children, staff at TSH designed videos outlining stress reduction strategies, informative posters, and support groups held via text messaging and video calls when available. These resources are geared toward both parents and scholarship students who often bear a large amount of responsibility in the household, and of which some are already parents themselves. A diverse library of materials has been created by TSH Social Department staff over the last few weeks. Topics include positive discipline, self-care, facilitating healthy dialogue with family members, and what is COVID-19 and how to prevent it. Additionally, two emergency phone lines and an anonymous e-mail account at TSH were set up to support anyone who needed to report violence. Trust circles and other resources have been made available to staff as well, who have also been deeply affected by this crisis.

Moving forward

Once it is deemed safe to reopen the school and resume in-person services, many issues will have to be considered and addressed. Among them are preventing the spread of the virus in the school, capitalizing on the academic time remaining, creating individual plans for each scholarship student based on their needs, analyzing and, where possible, addressing continued food insecurity and economic hardship, as well as responding to the predicted increase of levels of abuse, neglect, and trauma among the student population. TSH will have to decide how to rework the academic schedule, shift activities and focuses in all areas in order to meet the changing needs, and analyze which students will be able to catch up and which ones will need to repeat the school year so as not to fall increasingly behind. TSH will soon reopen, but we will see the effects of the virus in Guatemala, in TSH, and in the students and their families for years to come.

Conclusion

In this case study, we have presented the process that one local NGO utilized to ensure the students and families continue to be served and supported during the global health pandemic caused by COVID-19. Clearly, the steps that EFTC and TSH took to support their students will not work in every situation that local NGOs face during this time. However, this case study does underscore some important aspects that many other organizations will find helpful. First, the response to COVID-19 must, by necessity, be local in many, if not most, aspects. The preexisting connections that existed between EFTC, TSH, and local providers and businesses are vital for the success of TSH’s contingency plan to support their students and families. Second, the local cultural values and economic constraints must be considered. For example, TSH is providing students’ schoolwork to families in various ways to ensure that all students are able to access the work they need to complete. Third, and perhaps most importantly, local responses to this pandemic (and, unfortunately, likely future crises) must be flexible; changes in timelines, understood needs, and goals are bound to happen in such a situation.

By focusing on local, flexible, and culturally relevant support, NGOs can be, quite literally, the bridges that keep communities and families alive and healthy during a crisis. Without the fast and flexible thinking and work of TSH and EFTC staff, many families in Jocotenango would be without food, cleaning, and hygiene products; yet, with the locally based response from TSH and EFTC, many of these families’ basic needs continue to be met. We encourage other NGOs that work in and focus on local communities to consider how the aspects of EFTC’s and TSH’s response might be adjusted to appropriately support their own communities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.