Leamos Juntos Yucatán

Leamos Juntos Yucatán, the literacy program of Proyecto Itzaes, currently provides beautiful, high quality children's books and family literacy programs to six villages in Yucatán, Mexico.

With your help we can bring the gift of books and family reading to more villages and enrich our programs for thousands of Yucatecan families.

In 2001, with an initial gift, the Raising a Reader (RAR) program was first introduced to the families of Proyecto Itzaes in Chicxulub Puerto, Yucatán Mexico.

In 2006, we are excited to announce that we will be partnering with the Bring Me A Book Foundation to provide beautiful Spanish language and bilingual books for older children in our villages. This collaboration will provide self-sustaining libraries and parent training programs for the families in six Yucatán villages in the coming year. The partnership with Bring Me A Book will greatly enhance and build upon the foundation that Proyecto Itzaes has developed by working closely with the villages and committed individuals of the community.

Leamos Juntos Yucatán addresses the extreme poverty of the Maya village children and emphasizes a multilingual, multicultural approach to reach those most in need. These children often enter kinder without having held a book or developed basic pre-reading skills. Our take-home book bag program has successfully reached the toughest, most critical population in Yucatán—low income families in small villages where parents are poor readers or do not have reading confidence.

In the past eleven years, as a measurable outcome of PI, the children of Chicxulub Puerto are continuing on not just to high school, but to the university and via the Leamos Juntos program, the level of literacy of the entire village has changed dramatically. PI Yucatán is a community effort and every learner at Proyecto Itzaes is also a teacher. This is reflected in the motto of the project: Ka'ambal U tia'al Ka'ansaj Aprender para Enseñar Learning in Order to Teach.