St. Madeleine Sophie School has received an Award of Recognition from the Guatemalan Ministry of Education for its aid to education in Guatemala.

Over the last year, the students, parents and faculty of St. Madeleine Sophie School have raised money to support their partner schools in the small villages of La Trinidad and Don Pancho, two rural Mayan communities located in the mountainous region of central Guatemala.

The Award of Recognition was presented Sept. 23 on behalf of the government of Guatemala by Gary Teale, Executive Director of Avivará, the U.S./Guatemalan organization responsible for delivering the supplies and materials funded by the money raised by St. Madeleine Sophie School.

Don Pancho, like many other indigenous villages in Guatemala, has over 70 percent of its families living in poverty and a literacy rate of less than 25 percent.

The village of La Trinidad is somewhat unique in that it was originally a community located in the northern highlands of Guatemala which was massacred in 1982 during the Guatemalan civil war. Many of its residents were killed in that massacre, and the remainder fled to southern Mexico where they lived as refugees for 15 years. In 1997, after the signing of the Guatemala Peace Accords ending the civil war, the village was repatriated to its current location just south of the active volcano, Fuego.

The St. Madeleine Sophie School community have helped purchase teaching materials, classroom equipment, textbooks, and other much educational supplies for the teachers and 250 students living in these two villages.