Hakkasan Group partnered with Grammy Award winning artist Zedd and Pencils of Promise (PoP) to construct a school in the Aldea Tonquín I community of Guatemala including a new classroom and washroom block and create a quality learning environment for hundreds of students and teachers.

Why Guatemala?

In Guatemala, where 59% of the population lives below the poverty line, socioeconomic status is one of the biggest barriers to accessing quality education _{(World Bank 2018)}.

The average length of schooling for a Guatemalan child is only four years and 24% of the population is illiterate _{(US Aid 2014; World Bank 2014)}. This is one of the highest illiteracy rates in the Western Hemisphere.

Pencils of Promise works with 190 communities in Guatemala to ensure students overcome these, and other, barriers to accessing quality education. Currently, PoP is impacting over 38,000 students in Guatemala.

The over 2,000 members of the Aldea Tonquín I community work in agriculture cultivating corn, beans and cardamom. The community was devoted to providing a valuable education to its students and contributed 20 percent of the resources and labor required for construction.

PoP establish partnerships with communities who are deeply committed to their children’s education. The support of the Aldea Tonquín I community ensures the sustainability of the school that it will remain a quality learning environment for generations to come.

The new structure will serve 196 students, spread throughout 8 classes.

PoP, strives towards a world in which every child can experience and benefit from quality education. In Aldea Tonquín I, students were learning in a structurally unsound building. Additionally, they were easily distracted, and classrooms were overcrowded, often forcing grades to double up. These conditions clearly posed a hazard to student safety and well-being, as well as to engagement and learning.

A quality learning environment is critical to increasing student attendance, engagement and overall literacy outcomes.

We are delighted to be able to partner with the Aldea Tonquín I community to build a new three-unit classroom block!

The project broke ground in December 2019 with the burying of a time capsule and the inauguration for the new school will occur in 2021.

This is the third school Hakkasan Group have partnered with Pencils of Promise in the last two years. To learn more about our impact in Ghana and Laos please visit here.