Common Hope Blog

In my last post I wrote about seven students who withdrew from school, and speculated that each case would have different specific reasons for dropping out, but that they’d share the same ultimate reason, poverty . Looking back, that’s not much of a prediction. Poverty is basically our demographic target.

However, I have found some less obvious similarities among the students, as well as, perhaps, a difference. I’ll focus on two of them. They appear to have a lot in common.

They’re both 18 years old, and are the oldest male children of single mothers. This year, one began 8th grade and the other 10th grade, which means they’re both at least two years older than the “appropriate age” for their grade. I put “appropriate age” in quotes because so many Guatemalan students are older than the theoretical age for their grade that it’s a slippery statistic, though not a meaningless one. There’s a clear, statistical link between being two years older than age appropriate and the likelihood of dropping out of school.

We’ve also found — in everyday observation and in statistical analysis — that the oldest male child is at high risk for not completing his education. When a family is struggling to put food on the table, everyone who can is expected to work, and the eldest male has the most earning potential.

Each of them has a social worker who has tried to help find options, such as enrolling in a weekend-only school as a way to continuing one’s education while contributing financially to the family, and both are faced with a difficult decision.

Here their stories start to diverge. The young mechanic decided that working full time was his best option, and is ending his affiliation. The other, who had enrolled in an accounting/bookkeeping program for reasons more bureaucratic than because he was actually interested in that career, may yet continue his education. He’s expressed interest in studying dental hygiene, so his affiliation is still active, but conditional. If he puts forth a plan of study for next year, his affiliation will continue, if not, it will end.

As the eldest males in families with real need, considering all the pressures and expectations that it carries, it seems cavalier to simply say they have opportunities, they have a choice, they can make their decision.

Yet in the end, that’s what has to happen.

For those of us born into more forgiving circumstances, it’s not easy to see how limited are other’s possibilities. We can’t control all the variables or outcomes. But we can create more opportunities for those who have few. One young man has made his decision; I’m waiting to see what happens with the other.

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IMG_0672, originally uploaded by Common Hope.

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Each month a plastic box arrives on my desk, filled with checks made out to various schools where affiliated students attend. Attached to each check is a spreadsheet with the names and other information of all the affiliated students at that school. One of my tasks is to review the checks and documentation to make sure it all adds up, that policies are being followed, and we can authorize payment.

Education is not free in Guatemala, and secondary school is fairly expensive. School fees are our biggest program expense. At the secondary level, depending on the grade and school, monthly fees range from around $35 to almost $70 per month. Described in dollars that may not sound like much, but for perspective, the fees for just one kid in high school is roughly a third of a typical family’s income.

So each month I spend part of a day looking over a long lists of names and affiliation numbers, along with some other data, to double-check that all those payments are right. This month I noticed something I hadn’t before. One of the names had a zero in the fees column with the words “withdrew from school” next to it.

That happens, of course. We have about 2,700 affiliated students, so no matter what, you’re going to see some drop out. Each case is particular, but you get a large enough population and it becomes a statistical probability: X% will drop out in any given year.

I jotted down the name, thinking I might look into what happened. Maybe this kid’s story would tell us something that we could use to improve another kid’s chance of graduating. Then I came across another case, so I noted her information, too. Then another, and another. I found seven kids dropped out this month. That really got my attention. I don’t remember seeing that before. I stopped thinking about individual stories and started to wonder what was the trend. Why so many all at once?

On the way to a meeting, I asked a couple of colleagues that question, all of whom suggested possible factors, such as harvest time for some crops, having failed mid-year exams, other ideas, but none really knew for sure. I expect that as I follow up, someone here will know the particular facts of each case, but in the end they’ll all be different enough that the most you can really say about them in common is “poverty.”

Last week I wrote about a United Nations report on inequality in Guatemala. Within Latin America, only Bolivia ranks higher than Guatemala in the gap between the rich and the poor. The roots of inequality go back to colonial times, but the effects and the means by which its passed from one generation to the next were there in the line “withdrew from school.”

When we affiliate a family and pay their school fees, subsidize their health care, and provide them the opportunity to live in decent housing, in effect we immediately reduce inequality and temporarily boost them above the poverty line. But unless they gain the skills during the intervening years to qualify for stable employment, it’s only temporary.

One study, looking across developing countries, shows that graduating high school doubles earning potential. Another study found that a Guatemalan needs about 12 years of education to support a family of four above the poverty line. That all squares with our own experience: without a high school degree, it’s tough to get stable employment at a decent wage.

A couple of years ago we teamed up with the University of Wisconsin to measure the long-term impact of our programs, and they found that affiliated students graduated high school at better than twice the rate as those in the control group. That’s a huge impact, and we’re proud of those results.

But those are macro-level statistics. At the individual level, seven kids just dropped out of school, and by doing so, their chance of a better life began slipping away. And Guatemala became just a bit more unequal.

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