Our stories

We opened our Community Center!

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On Saturday, July 29th, we opened the doors of our Community Center - a place where laughter echoes through the halls, knowledge blossoms, and friendships flourish! Our hearts overflow with gratitude for the years of hard work, dedication, and support that have transformed our dream into a reality.

Through this community space, children will have opportunities to discover the joy of learning, youth will explore their passions and families will strengthen their bonds. Together, we aim to create an environment where everyone can grow and thrive.

But our journey is not over. As we celebrate this milestone, we recognize that there is much work ahead. We need your continued support to sustain the Center. We invite you to continue being part of this legacy of love and transformation. Thank you for making this possible!

Let us stand united as we strive for a future filled with boundless possibilities, united families, and healthier communities.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

With gratitude and hope,

The Planting Seeds Team

Meet Eliza Mejicanos: an example of perseverance and effort

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Eliza grew up in Zone 3 of Guatemala City, where she learned the value of resilience at an early age. Unfortunately, the public school system in Guatemala has inadequate infrastructure, poorly trained teachers and lacks funding. Furthermore, the high poverty rate in the country makes it difficult for students to afford basic supplies and attend school regularly.

As a result, Eliza started working at the age of 14 to finance her education. She initially worked at the municipal garbage dump but quickly realized that she was not being respected or treated fairly. Working conditions in Zone 3 are often harsh and physically demanding. She kept going from job to job around the community, always striving for something better.

One day, Eliza noticed a group of kids leaving a building and wondered who they were and what they were doing. She approached them and discovered the breakdance classes and many other community programs offered by Planting Seeds. Driven by her desire to learn, Eliza joined the English classes, which were taught by Shannon, the co-executive director of Planting Seeds. Today, Eliza is in the most advanced English course offered through Planting Seeds and is one of the most skilled break-dancers.

Throughout the years, Eliza has been one of the most committed participants in our programs, so when she turned 18, Shannon invited her to become the community facilitator of the Go Girls! and After School Programs. Nowadays, she also serves as a teaching assistant in English classes, and once the community center opens, she will be a full time staff!

 Every day, as she passes the construction site of the future Community Center, she is filled with hope that young kids will have a safe place to pursue their passions. Despite the challenges she faced growing up, Eliza remains outspoken, resilient, and committed to making a positive impact in her community.

Experience the Power of Cultural Exchange with Planting Seeds Dual-Exchange Program

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Since 2018, Planting Seeds has been offering a Dual-Exchange program that allows students and educators around the world to bring a group to Guatemala and get a closer look at our programs. This unique opportunity allows participants to immerse themselves in a new culture and language and create new connections, breaking down barriers and building bridges between different worlds.

Gaspar Sucuqui, a father's group facilitator, says that the Dual-Exchange program has provided him with the opportunity to meet people from other countries and that visitors can immerse themselves in a new culture and interact with locals on a more personal level. This benefits both hosts and visitors alike, as locals get to learn about other cultures as well, fostering mutual understanding and respect.

Our Dual-Exchange program also offers educational opportunities for locals, providing language practice and skill development. These experiences bring together individuals from diverse backgrounds and cultures who may not have an opportunity to interact otherwise.

Whether you're a teacher seeking an immersive educational opportunity or a traveler looking to make a real difference in someone's life, our Dual-Exchange program has something to offer. Don't miss out on this unforgettable experience that will have a lasting impact on the world!

Partnership with One Day’s Wages

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Partnership with One Day’s Wages


Earlier this year, we partnered with the organization One Day’s Wages. With their help, we fundraised over $44,000, allowing us to continue turning our preschools into Comprehensive Early Learning Centers! 


Thanks to this partnership, we have been able to expand and strengthen the wraparound programs we offer in our preschools, and in this way, we are working more comprehensively with our students and their families. 


The programs are Nutrition, Reproductive Health, Book-lending and Parent Training!


The Nutrition Program allows us to offer a healthy meal every school day in our preschools in San Lucas, Sacala and Tioxya. In addition, starting this year, we partnered with Proyecto CAN to offer nutrition workshops for the mothers of our students.


The Reproductive Health Program is possible thanks to our partnership with WINGS. They have come to our preschools to offer information sessions about sexual education and reproductive health. This program is not only increasing access to information in our rural communities, but we are also coordinating clinic visits so that the mothers of our students can access reproductive health services. 


The Community Library and Book-lending Program have allowed us to have two librarians and one book-lending program coordinator working to lend over 1000 books to benefit 250 children in 8 preschools across the country. All our preschool students receive 1 set of 4 books every month to take home and read with their families. In addition, we have continued offering “Creating Little Readers” workshops in the eight preschools where we work. 


The Parent Training Program continues to prepare the parents of our students to become their children’s primary educators. We run these intensive training sessions monthly to ensure that our students have the support they need at home to succeed academically.


We are also excited because the “Playing with my Kid” program, which we suspended in 2020 due to the pandemic, will come back in 2023!


This work wouldn’t be possible without the support of partnerships and organizations such as One Day’s Wages! We are grateful to partner with ODW to provide the wraparound services our students need to grow brighter futures. 

Our Approach to Holistic Education

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The Planting Seeds Methodology places children at the center. Programs such as “Playing with my Kid” and Parent Training have become essential to complement the education of our students. Both programs helped nurture children and their families, making education comprehensive and aiding parents in reinforcing their children’s learning at home.

Over the last two years, we modified our methodology to fit the remote and hybrid program that we began as a response to the pandemic.


We began offering monthly parent training sessions so our students’ parents could support their children with school. The training has allowed parents to take on the role of their children’s primary educators, a role they have successfully fulfilled!

In 2021, we began implementing our book-lending program, and families began receiving four books every month to reinforce children’s learning. We also provided reading workshops that allowed parents to learn how to stimulate their children through reading. Many children fell in love with our books and with reading!

At the beginning of 2022, children returned to school gradually in 4-person groups. Now, in August, children are coming in 6-person groups, which has allowed us to have a longer class schedule.

We are proud to keep growing brighter futures for children and developing more united and healthier families through education!

Mentoring Parents and Students

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"I feel excited about seeing my students again, even if it's only going to be for a couple of days a week I think this will be especially helpful with certain students that have struggled a lot with remote learning. I feel happy that we will have a chance to work together in the classroom and I'm excited to guide both students and parents. I think mentoring parents will be beneficial to reinforce the lessons that our students learn at home."
-Helen Chacón, Preschool teacher at "Garden Seeds of Hope"

Planting Seeds teachers have gone through a roller-coaster of emotions over the past year. We are so incredibly proud of them! Not only did they adapt to new working conditions in a record time, but they have continued pouring their heart into their work to ensure that our students keep learning despite the different challenging conditions we keep encountering.

Over the last year, we have witnessed a significant shift in parents' involvement in their children's education. Helen Chacón, one of our preschool teachers in Tioxya, says that many of the parents she is working with don't know how to read or write; nevertheless, they have put a lot of effort into helping their children. As a teacher, Helen is very motivated to help parents succeed and become effective mentors for their children. Being a teacher in these circumstances is not an easy task. Not everyone has the most appropriate conditions to carry out remote learning, so it has been difficult to ensure that all the activities and information are delivered to both students and parents in the best way possible. However, in a way or another, our teachers have found alternatives to support every household.

Helen says that many parents have become more patient and willing to lead educational activities with their children. We are very excited to take this as an opportunity to help parents develop the skills needed to become their children's primary educators.

Sharing the Love for Reading

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In 2019, through the combined effort of partner organizations and incredible supporters, Planting Seeds opened a Community Library in Zone 3 of Guatemala City with the objective of sharing the love for reading to our program participants and community members alike. The program consists of providing a safe place where everyone can come to read and a book-lending program. In a few short years, this Community Library has transformed to provide access to books to not only Zone 3, but all Planting Seeds preschools.

This transformation started in 2019, when we launched our “Read With Your Kid” trainings to the parents at our preschools to improve early literacy skills and help foster parent-child relationships. We accompanied these trainings with a weekly book-lending program at our model school in San Lucas. Now in 2021, we began the year conducting surveys in the preschools to find out the barriers that parents had in taking an active role in the education of their children. The main factors reported by the parents were a lack of experience, confidence and access to books.

To combat the lack of experience and confidence parents expressed in the survey, we began providing practice based parent trainings at our preschools. These trainings are extremely intentional and focus on providing parents with hands-on skills and an opportunity to practice those skills with the teachers and fellow parents. In our “creating little readers” workshop, all parents partnered up and practiced reading to each other as if the other parent was their kid. The parents then received in person feedback from the teachers. Although many parents present difficulties reading or writing themselves, our trainings focus on supporting parents’ ability to read with their kids by telling stories through pictures, adapting to the different needs of all of Planting Seeds parents.

In addition to these trainings, we have begun expanding our Zone 3 Library’s book-lending program to combat the lack of access to books in our rural communities. Now, Planting Seeds students get to borrow four books a month. At the end of each month, parents return the books and the parents bring home a new set. Planting Seeds families are so grateful for this program.

This growth in our programming is due to our incredibly passionate educators, open and hardworking families, and your generosity. Thank you for all of your support. If you have the capacity, your continued help can provide books to families through our Community Library and necessary training to support parents develop a love of reading in their households.

Teachers Day - Aleyda Machán

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Aleyda de las Mercedes Machan Sosa is an empathetic teacher who embodies an attitude of positivity, expressing through her face, tone of voice and body language a tenderness that invites children to feel trust, setting the ideal environment for learning.

Aleyda became a teacher in our San Lucas preschool last year. Her vocation as a teacher and love for early childhood education have shined during her time at Planting Seeds. She recalls always wanting to be a preschool teacher, even when she was a kid herself.

When she was little, she used to organize learning activities and games with other children, being her siblings, cousins, classmates or neighbors. She even remembers playing to be the teacher of the bunnies she had in her house. At age 13, she knew she wanted to become a preschool teacher because she liked playing, singing and dancing with little children.

When she grew up, she enrolled in a college in Antigua to become a preschool teacher. Soon after she graduated, she gained experience in different schools, working with both small children and teenagers. She was director of a Center for Family Development, where she mainly worked in vocational training for teenagers. However, deep in her heart, she knew that her main passion was working in early childhood education.

When she began working with the Planting Seeds Methodology, she realized the importance of educating through a holistic family-centered approach, which she had not encountered in any other school in Guatemala. In her view, one of the best parts of the methodology is using positive framing to support children's behavior rather than focusing on what they shouldn't be doing, which is something prevalent in other school systems.

Aleyda enjoys singing and dancing with her students. She loves seeing them laughing and enjoying themselves. She also really loves when her students manage to achieve something that has taken them a while to learn.

For her, a good teacher is born from the heart. When a kid, a young person or an adult achieves something, we should also consider it as the achievement of the teachers that paved the way for their learning.

We are happy to have Aleyda and so many other wonderful and passionate teachers working with us! Thank you to all the teachers that have taught us throughout our lives, we wouldn’t be the same without you!!