Youth Mentors / Books Without Borders!

The Proyecto Itzaes motto Learning in Order to Teach, Aprender Para Enseñar, Ka’ambal Uti’al Kansaj is at the heart of our Youth Mentor program. PI asesores (mentors/tutors) achieve amazing things each day and are the backbone of our reading, computer and early childhood learning programs. In this program, middle and high school students (and now university students as well!) teach what they have learned to younger students in their villages. The asesores learn first hand how to teach, designing their classes and activities and most importantly passing along their own passion for learning.

In spring of 2008, students from Menlo School in Menlo Park, California traveled to Yucatan as youth mentors and worked side by side with PI asesores. Menlo School raised funds to provide beautiful books and bookcase libraries from Bring Me A Book for the villages of Cholul and Chicxulub Pueblo and inspired our youngest students; reading aloud to them, creating new stories, folding origami animals and much more.

PI mentors, local and international, spread their reading and learning to others and are essential role models for the younger children.

Jessica, an asesore from Ixil, now studying mathematics at the university summed up her experience by writing recently: Es por eso y mucho mas que estoy muy agradecida con el Proyecto Itzaes, pues creo que la labor que hacemos el enseñar a los niños del proyecto es tambien una gran ganancia para nosotro los asesores, ya qu es muy divertido y agradable.