Mission

Planting Seeds International (PSI) is a non-profit organization that seeks to eradicate the barriers that contribute to poverty by working with vulnerable communities to provide high-quality, comprehensive education for children and families throughout Guatemala.

Our main objective is to provide low-income children with a strong educational foundation in their early years, including academic and socio-emotional skills and a love for lifelong learning, which in the long-run will help them succeed in primary school, middle school and highschool, bettering their chances to achieve socio-economic mobility and a better quality of life.

We do this by implementing the Planting Seeds Teaching Methodology, which is a learning model informed by some of the most influential pedagogues in early childhood education and that has been adapted in the last 20 years in the context of indigenous and vulnerable communities in Guatemala.

The Planting Seeds teaching methodology is a holistic educational approach that focuses on meeting the needs of the whole child (physical, cognitive, social, emotional, creative and spiritual) while fostering autonomy, curiosity, andself-knowledge.

Our model is recognized by the Ministry of Education in Guatemala as a high-quality educational model,as it focuses on developing the skills that children need to learn how to learn, as opposed to the rote memorization model which is implemented in the majority of public schools in Guatemala.

We also provide training and guidance to parents to become the primary educators of their children, ensuring that our students get proper stimulation during the first years of life to support brain development.

All of our work is guided by the belief that we need to promote community’s ownership and local leadership. We do this by training local teachers and building the capacity of community facilitators, which we see as a critical step to enact change and mobilize communities.

We currently work in five communities: San Lucas Sacatepéquez (San Lucas), Sacalá las Lomas (Sacalá), San Antonio deTioxya (Tioxya),San Pedro Yepocapa (Yepocapa), and Zone 3 in Guatemala City.

In San Lucas, Sacalá, Tioxya, and Yepocapa,we have preschools that serve rural indigenous populations. Our teachers are native indigenous women who speak the local language and share our vision of providing holistic education to address the needs of the whole child.

In Guatemala City, we work with two partner organizations to implement our early childhood education methodology in their preschools.

Since 2017, we began expanding our focus to offer community-led programs focused on family nurturing, children’s recreation, women and gender equality, professional development and community leadership.