Preschool and Primary School
La Buena Tierra
Mexico

Over 10 years, Elizabeth Marroquin developed a great preschool for low-income families living on an abandoned train track right-of-way in Cuernavaca, Mexico. For the 2008-2009 school year, La Buena Tierra (The Good Earth Preschool) served 45 children, ages 3, 4 and 5 years. Before this preschool existed, the children from this poor barrio had consistently failed when they entered first grade because they had received no preparation for school.

As additional needs became obvious La Buena Tierra (The Good Earth) started additional programs. A popular after-school tutoring program was developed for elementary school children. Mothers gathered here once a week for parenting education classes in the evening. The next need was for a quality elementary school for the children finishing at the preschool. These children had become excited about learning, but they became frustrated and lost interest in poor, under funded, overcrowded elementary schools.

An elementary school is started

A small property, below street level and completely full of trash, became available directly across the dirt street from the preschool. In 2008 EPIC was able to help La Buena Tierra purchase the property. With the help of the whole neighborhood, the trash was cleared and during the spring and summer of 2009 the first 2 classrooms of an elementary school were built. By September there was a functioning school with first and second grade. Everyone was very excited! In the summer of 2010 a third grade classroom was built on a second floor above the first grade and the adjoining future forth grade classroom became a computer classroom. The hope is to add a classroom each year until the school offers first through sixth grades.

Computer classes

Coming from very poor homes, the children at La Buena Tierra had never had the opportunity to even touch a computer. In June 2010, two groups from the Boulder and Ft. Collins Mennonite Churches took 9 donated laptop computers to La Buena Tierra. They set up a temporary computer lab and gave the students their first computer classes. The children were delighted and, like kids everywhere, they took to it like ducks to water! The parents feel that learning computer skills will give their children aspirations for higher education, in addition to being valuable in the job market. Next the mothers began pleading for computer classes for themselves, and La Buena Tierra set up a little more permanent computer lab in the future forth grade classroom which was used by the children during the day and the mothers afterwards.