Briana Provost

Professor Johnson

English 293

5 September 2016

Process Document 2

After more consideration I have thought about which topic I would like to

research for this semester, and I have decided to address the limited access that women

have to education in the small nation Guatemala. This country is known to be very

impoverished and have a low education rate especially for women. A large amount of this

lack of education for young women is due to the cultural atmosphere that exists in

Guatemala. Due to a great deal of violence that occurs in communities during this post-

civil-war period in their history, many parents feel as though it is unsafe to send their

children on long journeys to get to school (especially if that child is a girl).

Not only will I be tasked with the challenge of convincing people why Guatemala

is such an important place to discuss the issue of lack of education, but I will also have to

come up with some type of method to make access to education more attainable for the

young girls of this country. In order to complete both of these tasks I will have to look

deeper into the cultural roots of the Guatemalan people, read up on any legislative bodies

that might prevent women from receiving their education, and also educate myself on

some charity organizations that have tried to assist with this problem in the past and what

worked well or didn’t work well for these organizations. One way I would like to address

the argument as to why Guatemala is such and important place to focus on would be by

looking into immigration patterns. Although this is not my political belief, many
Americans in this country believe that Central Americans should not be immigrating into

this country both illegally and legally. I would like to look at the statistics and argue for

the fact that if there were more opportunities for education and people had more access to

the supplies to make those opportunities, less people would want to leave Guatemala, and

if people did leave Guatemala, they would be more likely to be well-educated and not

possess the low-life image that politicians like Donald Trump impress upon the public.

An idea that I have to help solve the solution of this lack of access to education would be

to give children more access to learning through education by creating a mobile

classroom that would go around and not only educate students, but also provide them

with tools like books to help increase their level of literacy.

I have a lot of research to do on this topic in order to grasp how fully this lack of

access to education has affected the lives of women across the nation of Guatemala. Two

people that I believe would be good resources are my aunt, and an advisor of a leadership

program I was in during my time in high school. My aunt’s family currently lives in

Guatemala and she can speak to the state of education and poverty in the country. My old

advisor, Roger Bourassa, is a part of an organization called the Education for the

Children Foundation, which is dedicated to promote children’s education in Guatemala. I

know that both of these two people would be great resources for an interview going

forward, and I am very excited to get started.

Potential Sources:

Films for the Humanities & Sciences (Firm), Films Media Group, and Radiotelevisión

Española. Guatemala Silenced. New York, N.Y.: Films Media Group, 2006. Web.

Women of Latin America; Women of Latin America.

Lopez, Gustavo. "Hispanics of Guatemalan Origin in the United States, 2013."Pew

Research Center.15 Sept. 2015. Web. 8 Sept. 2016.

Taylor, Clark. Seeds of Freedom: Liberating Education in Guatemala.Boulder, CO:

Paradigm Publishers, 2013. Web. Series in critical narrative; Series in critical

narratives.

World Bank. Poverty in Guatemala. Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2004. Print. A

World Bank country study; A World Bank country study.