CIE TAA' PI'T ONG
Comunidad intercultural Educativa
Educación para la Vida
Education for Life is a Mayan pedagogy that teaches, through our programs, that we are community, nature, energy, spirit, and sacred. It promotes balanced coexistence with all forms of natural life: I am the community and the community is me; I am Mother Lake Atitlán and she is me; and I am
Mother Earth and she is me.
Aprendo para la Vida - LEARNING for Life
This after-school program serves children ages four to eleven from our Maya Tz'utujil community. In 2026, we have 70 full-time students, including second-year students who first joined the program at ages four and five.
Seeing our students reading age-appropriate books from our library is deeply satisfying and represents a major success. Some children have read over 25 books—something uncommon in our country, especially considering that the quality of education in Guatemala is among the lowest in Latin America.
In 2025, Taa’ Pi’t launched a pilot program with 4- and 5-year-olds. Due to its success, we started a second group in 2026 for 5- and 6-year-olds. We currently have three student groups: two consisting of 5- and 6-year-olds—with 25 students in each group (50 in total)—and one group of 10- to 12-year-olds with 20 students.
Cooking workshops, primarily for mothers, convene in our kitchen which blends the traditional with the modern. Stainless steel fixtures, generally not found in their homes are side-by-side traditional items such as grinding stones, clay utensils, cane-work, textiles, and more. The space is set up to accommodate groups of up to 15 mothers. Five-hundred mothers have requested workshops and been trained so far.
This program (formerly known as "Sacred Balance in Our paradise) connects children with Mother Nature, teaching them to protect the soil, the seeds, Mother Lake Atitlán, and consequently, their own health. Ancestral Agriculture serves children, mothers, families, and the wider lake community.
