Students at a pre-primary center supported by Save the Children perform a traditional Mayan dance.

While most people associate Starbucks with tall lattes or the latest frappuccino, at Save the Children it makes us think of education and the possibility of a better future for children.

Earlier this year, Starbucks partnered with Save the Children to positively impact coffee growing communities in the highlands of Guatemala. In this area, over 90% of the population are indigenous Mayan and have been subject to centuries of discrimination. Today they remain fundamentally marginalized from mainstream Guatemalan society, suffering the highest rates of poverty and lowest level of educational attainment nationally. The specialty coffee retailer committed 1.5 million dollars as part of a 4-year program designed to bring bilingual, bicultural education (in Mayan and Spanish) to pre-primary, primary, and secondary school students in three Guatemalan highland provinces, working with 20 pre-primary centers, 20 primary schools, and over 3,000 secondary school students through a rural distance learning program.

For the 12 million children and adults who inhabit the Central American country of Guatemala, the situation is dire:

• Some 80 percent of Guatemala’s rural indigenous population is poor, with 60 percent living in conditions of extreme poverty;
• A little over two-thirds of all indigenous children under 5 years of age are chronically malnourished;
• Illiteracy, malnutrition and infant and maternal mortality are extremely high, ranking as some of the worst in the Western Hemisphere.

The effects of almost four decades of civil war plus the historical legacy of social, political and economic exclusion of the indigenous population mean that the majority of the population still lack access to health, and education as well as basic services such as water, sanitation and electricity.

The development of the Mayan people and their path out of poverty will not occur without improved access to quality educational services. Yet many students don’t make it beyond the first few years of primary school, often due to their lack of preparation for the school environment and the low quality of educational services provided. In many communities where access to education is not the primary issue, quality due to irrelevant curricula or language of instruction is of serious concern.

The need for increased opportunities for bilingual-intercultural education is unique to the Guatemalan education system when compared with other systems in the region. Children of indigenous groups are far less likely to gain an education, with lower enrollment and higher drop out rates than for the rest of the population, especially for girls since there is a strong preference for keeping them at home.

But at Save the Children we place special emphasis on girls' education, arguably the most cost effective and far reaching investment in developing countries to affect change not just for the children and their communities but also for future generations, as girls grow to become educated mothers.

Starbucks and Save the Children representatives visit schools in Guatemala.

This past June, Starbucks representatives traveled to Guatemala to see schools already supported by Save the Children, as well as some of the new sites that will be added to our programs thanks to their commitment. New schools were selected, in coordination with the Guatemalan Ministry of Education at all levels, based on high levels of need as defined by World Bank Poverty Map of Guatemala; community commitment and interest in the program, low preschool, primary and secondary enrollment/attendance; and amount of coffee produced in these areas, to ensure that the children served belong to families whose livelihoods depend primarily on coffee.

Thanks to Starbucks' 1.5-million investment in education, thousands of Mayan children will directly benefit from increased access to pre-primary, primary and secondary education; improved quality and relevance of their education; and increased capacity of the communities to support the education of their children.

Support from Starbucks has helped secure an additional commitment from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)/Alliances, that seeks to foster public-private partnerships by leveraging corporate support with additional contributions. USAID/Alliances contributed US $600,000 to further expand our education programs to 12 additional schools in Guatemala.