The Valiant Leap
The Valiant Leap Scholarship is an incentive for any sixth grade girl within the upper Mestela and Chilax watersheds, in the form of a scholarship to support her to make the jump from sixth to seventh grade.
This is the most difficult transition for girls’ education. The drop out rate, even starting as young as fourth grade for girls, is over 75% annually. Girls that do not attend seventh grade are more likely to marry and have children early, contributing to the high birth rate and putting strain on natural resources as the population continues to grow and relies on subsistence farming. The reliance on subsistence farming leads to the clear cutting of vast tracts of cloud forest and exhaustion of soil due to monocropping.
Girls who can make the transition from elementary to junior high school find the future transitions to high school and to university much easier. These young women marry and have children much later, with better family planning and health outcomes. By helping these young women stay in school, this program breaks the cycle of poverty, contributing to lower birth rates and less stress on natural resources, which leads to better conservation of cloud forest habitat.
The young women in the target area live in tiny, remote mountain villages within Important Bird Areas (IBAs) as defined by BirdLife International. The conservation priority of the area immediately around these villages is incalculable. The bio-diversity is amazing, home to endemic species of tree frogs, orchids, and the winter home of threatened and endangered birds such as Golden-cheeked and Golden-winged Warblers. CCFC has seen through our other programs that when young women are empowered and educated, they become changemakers in their communities and advocates for the cloud forest and the planet.
Building on the positive results from our Kids & Birds and Women in Agroforestry Leadership for Conservation (WALC) programs, the Valiant Leap Scholarship extends CCFC’s education and conservation work into villages which have not yet benefited from our other programs and occupy important conservation areas. This program fulfills a need to reach more remote areas and expand the impact of our environmental and educational programs.
We’ve already launched this program with a couple of schools last year and this year we have opened the program to all of the primary schools of the two watersheds, approximately 47 villages.
Here is a photo of Yolanda Cao Mez at the primary school of Samelb, Tactic. Yolanda is presenting a sixth grade girl a coloring book of warblers both migratory and resident. The village is surrounded by cloud forests, home to the Resplendent Quetzal, Bearded Screech-Owl and Wine-throated Hummingbird. The village is smack-dab in the middle of an IBA, an important bird area.
This girl at the desk wants to go to seventh grade, and the odds are that she will not go to seventh grade without some financial aid. There are no junior high schools in her village of Samelb.
This is where CCFC comes in. With our Valiant Leap Scholarship Program, this girl can follow in the footsteps of Yolanda and go on in school. She also qualifies to take part in the WALC program this November or this coming January. This means she could win a double scholarship, which would increase her chances of going on in school even more.
Here’s the alternative. This twelve year old finishes sixth grade with a happy graduation ceremony and celebration and she stays home next school year and helps her mom in the house. This is very boring so she moves in with a boyfriend. Remember, she will be only 13 by then. Then the odds are very high that at 14 she is already expecting her first child. Her boyfriend who might be 19 or 20 when they meet, is maybe now 22 or 23 and is now responsible for his child wife and his growing family. It is a recipe for the continuation of the cycle of extreme poverty.
The jet fuel behind the exploding population growth in rural Alta Verapaz is precisely this dynamic: girls drop out of school at 12 or 13 years old, get married or just get pregnant. They start a family before they are legally adults. Birthrates soar, poverty indicators follow, deforestation and natural resources are pushed to their limits.
But do we know that scholarship programs work?
Yolanda, pictured above, comes from a village very similar to the village of Samelb. Beginning in seventh grade Yolanda had the advantage of some financial aid. In 2018 when Yolanda was between junior high and high school she began to participate in the WALC program. Yolanda has been a WALC participant, a WALC group leader and a WALC teacher. For several years now she has been an Advanced WALC Intern with CCFC during the school year, attending university on weekends.
This year Yolanda will finish her undergraduate degree in social work and she will finish year one of a two year program in agronomy. She has become an agent of positive change in her world. She encourages and inspires others. A phrase we use a lot in our work at CCFC: “To WALK is to make a path.” Nowhere is this more true than with Yolanda. Our hope is that someday we will be able to say the same thing about the little girl smiling with her warbler coloring book in her hand.
But to do this we need your help. CCFC runs on donations from generous individuals like you. Please help us launch this program by sending in a donation to CCFC. Any amount helps. A donation of $200 would allow us to give one Valiant Leap Scholarship to a girl just like this girl from Samelb.
Our amazing community of donors and contributors have helped us establish the WALC program. We’ve given over one million US dollars in education and scholarships. The Valiant Leap Scholarship program is as urgent as it is worthy of your support.
Please send in a contribution and help us kick off this important new program!
Send contribution checks to:
Community Cloud Forest Conservation
2320 Devin Lane
Long Lake, MN
55356
Make checks payable to: CCFC