The members of Miami’s Guate Bonita club, an organization aimed at improving education of children in Guatemala, gears up for their annual event, the Amazing Race. The next Amazing Race will take place Nov. 9. (Erin O'Neil | The Miami Student)
Imagine you are back in elementary school, only this time you are in an impoverished town in rural Guatemala. Imagine that the locals of this town are so poor they often resort to breaking into the school, taking anything they can get their hands on, even the toilets right out of the bathroom stalls and the desks from inside your classrooms. Now imagine that the only protection your school can provide for you is an old, dilapidated fence made of wire hanger, incapable of actually keeping anyone out.
According to Miami senior Tyler Nichols, these are some of the unfortunate realities for the children of the Official Mixed Rural School of the Town of El Chupadero in Nueva Santa Rosa, Guatemala.
Nichols is the Advertising Chair for Miami's Guate Bonita, a service organization founded on campus in 2010 by a small group of students who shared a similar vision. Guate Bonita, meaning "Beautiful Guatemala," works to raise money for the children of the elementary school in El Chupadero, in hopes of improving their education and, ultimately, the quality of their lives.
In addition to the work they do from afar, members of this organization focus on raising cultural awareness on both Miami's campus and in the Oxford community, according to Jose Carlos Albarrán, the faculty adviser for Guate Bonita and Professor of Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
"The goal is to inform Miami students about issues of education in small Central American communities, while at the same time actually fundraising to alleviate some of these issues," Albarrán said.
Though still in its infancy, Guate Bonita has managed to gain momentum in its efforts both on campus and abroad.
Already, the group has completed one of its largest projects for the school. The club's vice president, junior Erin O'Neal, explained that the school's bathrooms did not even work properly, and there were very few to be shared among the 230 plus students and faculty.
"We built bathrooms for the school with money from our first year. Brand new bathrooms with doors and locks, one for each grade and two for the teachers," O'Neal said. The doors and locks are a vital component because, without them, the school risks losing the toilets to theft again.
Guate Bonita also offers a trip to Guatemala each year, where the students can meet and interact with the children, seek out additional areas of need within the school, and better acquaint themselves with the Guatemalan culture as they travel to various cities.
Nichols, who attended this trip during his winter break in 2010-11, spent 10 days in the country. He said the students went shopping for the school while down there.
Enjoy what you're reading?
Signup for our newsletter
"It was really cool when we were walking around the town with all this money we had raised," Nichols said. "We went with the teachers and picked out pots and pans, soccer balls, toys. When we got to the school, we just unloaded a huge truck of all these school supplies and toys that we had bought with money entirely from our fundraising. It was just so cool to see that."
After these successful undertakings, Guate Bonita is on to the next project, which they have been working toward since last year. They want to remove the shoddy fence that currently surrounds the school and build a new one in its place - hopefully one strong enough to prevent theft and, as a result, ensure the kids' safety, according to O'Neal.
The total costs of building the fence could be as much as $2,000, according to Junior Virginia Alvarez, the club's Treasurer. Fortunately for the club, Guate Bonita's biggest fall fundraising event is only weeks away, on Nov. 9.
"The Amazing Race is essentially a scavenger hunt across campus. This will be our third year hosting the event, so we have really fine-tuned it," Nichols said.
Students register as teams of four and complete a variety of mentally and physically challenging tasks, scattered across locations campus-wide. The goal is to finish as many of these challenges as possible within the allotted two hours, and once finished, the participants all grill out at Peffer Park.
The club gives out three different prize baskets at the end. The first is for the race winner and will include gift cards many Uptown staples. Some donors include Fiesta Charra, Buffalo Wild Wings, You're Fired, Kofenya, Follett's Book Store, and Insomnia Cookies, according to O'Neal. The other two baskets are awarded to the most spirited team (in the past, participants have dressed in costume, for example) and the team who donates the most money. Though the event is technically free, there is a suggested donation of $20 per team, but the team that exceeds this amount by the widest margin wins that category.
This year, the event's name has been modified to "The Amazing Race: Fiesta Edition," to provide a fun, culturally relevant twist. More information about registering your team can be found on the Guate Bonita Facebook and Twitter pages.
Guate Bonita now has its most members to-date, but it is still relatively small for a Miami organization.
"Sometimes people don't want to join some of the fundraising clubs - it's a lot of work, which can be intimidating," O'Neal said. "We certainly have fun, but it isn't one of the 'fun' clubs where you just go play. We have retained some awesome members though, and they are dedicated to this group and really put a lot of effort into it."
Despite their small size of 14 members, Guate Bonita has still gained substantial recognition across campus, and has made a substantial difference for the school in El Chupadero.
"You can see that Guate Bonita has had a major impact," Albarrán said, "Even on daily life - like going to the bathroom - something we would take for granted."
Guate Bonita has had a major impact on the members themselves, as well. Albarrán has been thrilled to see several students in the organization expand their goals as a result of their service to Guate Bonita.
"I have a student now who is in Colombia. [Guate Bonita] gave her so much empowerment to move forward in her studies and her plans." Other members, he said, now want to work with Latino communities in the United States, study abroad in other Latin American countries and work with the Latin American culture.
Read More
How one professor and her classes are preserving Oxford’s Black history
By Sean Scott | March 20, 2024Jazma Sutton, an assistant professor of history, teaches The Black Midwest (HST 350Q) and Black Women in America (HST 450D) classes. In both courses, she has students working with the Smith Library of Regional History and Miami’s archives to document and preserve Black history in Oxford.
Miami faculty members recount Freedom Summer in new documentary
By Luke Macy | February 25, 2022After seven years of work, “Training for Freedom,” a documentary highlighting Oxford’s involvement in the Freedom Summer of 1964, premiered on PBS Western Reserve on Valentine’s Day.
“Documenting the COVID-19 Pandemic”: History in the making
By Alice Momany | August 29, 2021In March 2020, Miami University’s archives launched “Documenting the COVID-19 Pandemic,” a collection focused on life during the COVID-19 pandemic.