The best way to write to the student you sponsor is by sending a message using the form above. Writing a note to a student is easy, economical, eco-friendly, and secure. Simply click “Submit” when you are finished writing.

CoEd will transmit your letter to Guatemala, where it will be translated and delivered to the student you sponsor. Students are not required to write back, but most want to communicate with their sponsors and are more than happy to write back!

We discourage this option, since international postal mail to Guatemala can be unreliable and CoEd is unable to guarantee that your letter will reach Guatemala, or how long it will take.

When writing to the student you sponsor, we encourage you to include a photo of yourself and your family. Rise scholars really enjoy receiving photos of their sponsors. We suggest writing once or twice a year to offer encouragement and build a relationship with the sponsored student. You are welcome to write more often if you choose. Share information about your favorite hobbies, information about family traditions, and details about where you work or go to school. Please do not go into detail about your material possessions or ask the student if they have any specific financial needs. CoEd reserves the right not to translate information that is not culturally appropriate or violates our policies.

It can take about four to six weeks for the student you sponsor to receive your letter from the time our office receives it. This time frame allows your letter to be sent to Guatemala, translated (if necessary), delivered to the field staff in students’ local communities, and passed along to them. We appreciate your patience as your message works its way to the students!

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Once your sponsorship begins, you will receive an annual update via email from the Rise Team​. The packet, usually sent in the fall, contains a photo and letter from the student you sponsor. You can also expect to receive other updates throughout the year via email—updates about the student’s academic progress, the program workshops, etc. Using email ensures that donors receive updates on the sponsored students as quickly and effectively as possible. Please ensure that CoEd has your email address so you can begin receiving these communications.

If you feel like you haven’t heard from us, check your Spam folder! Program updates will come from rise@coeduc.org. If you’re still not receiving anything, send us an email or give us a call to make sure we have your contact information up to date.

If, outside of the scope of the updates we provide, you would like further information about the student you sponsor, we ask you to send them a note using the form above, which is a cost-effective and standardized way to communicate with students. Answering specific questions about specific students on demand can get surprisingly complicated and costly. Students are spread out geographically, and our program staff doesn’t necessarily see every student every week, so this task ends up involving multiple staff members who are already busy serving the needs of the students in the program. Thanks for understanding the limitations of our resources.

Absolutely! Rise students absolutely LOVE meeting their sponsors in person. Think about how special you feel when someone comes from far away to see you, and multiply that times a thousand.  Join us on a CoEd Project Tour for the opportunity to meet the student you sponsor. Not only is it incredibly special for the students, many sponsors find that meeting and spending time with the Rise scholar they sponsor is the highlight of their trip. It is a great way to not only foster a relationship with the student, but to see the impact of your sponsorship first-hand. Visit www.coeduc.org/tours or contact us at tours@coeduc.org for more information about CoEd Project Tours.

What if I’m not coming on a scheduled tour?
If you plan on being in Guatemala outside of a scheduled tour, we will do our best to arrange a visit between you and the student you sponsor, but we need at least 60 days’ notice. We also suggest a $250 donation (portal.coeduc.org/donate) to offset the expenses associated with logistical planning for and staffing of the visit. We’ll be in communication with you if for some reason it would not be possible for you to visit with the student (timing, holidays, work schedules, etc.).

What about a student sponsored by my friend or a student I sponsor with my Rotary Club/group?
Sometimes tour participants also want to see a student that a friend or family member is sponsoring, even if that friend is not going to attend the tour themselves. While we want all sponsors to meet their students, it’s important to note the logistical challenge that comes with communicating with students and their families from over a dozen different communities, and arranging transportation for all of them for a visit, especially without the student’s sponsor in attendance. As such, if you would like to visit with a student that you do not personally sponsor with a half or full sponsorship, we suggest a $100 donation (portal.coeduc.org/donate) to offset the expenses associated with logistical planning and staffing for the visit.

For the sake of safety, all sponsors must be accompanied by CoEd staff when visiting with students, and any visits outside of those arranged by our staff are strictly forbidden. Cooperative for Education reserves the right to deny a request to visit a student if it deems that this connection may in any way put at risk the students, staff, or reputation of CoEd and its programs.

​Sponsoring a student’s education is the best gift you can give. Your letters and photos are also wonderful ways to show your ongoing support and belief in the student’s success. Sending other gifts is highly discouraged due to high customs fees, risk of theft, the unfairness it creates between students, and difficulty in delivering packages. For these reasons, we cannot accept gifts and ask that you not bring them on tours, either. For special occasions, consider making a donation to support the Rise Program as a whole through portal.coeduc.org/donate.

Please do not send money to a Rise student or their family. Any money sent in letters will be donated to support the Rise Program overall. CoEd chooses not to provide gifts directly to families since this contributes to a culture of paternalism and results in unequal support to families involved with the programs.

CoEd’s Youth Protection Policy is meant to protect both the sponsor and student. We do not share full names with donors or students, out of respect for the privacy of each. We also screen new sponsors through the National Sex Offender Registry. CoEd reserves the right to 1) decline a request by any person to sponsor or 2) discontinue a sponsorship if it deems that this connection in any way puts at risk the students, staff, or reputation of CoEd and its programs. Furthermore, Cooperative for Education reserves the right to deny any application for tour participation for the same reasons.

A huge part of this program’s success is the trust and rapport we are able to build between the students and our program staff. We promise Rise students confidentiality, so at times we may be unable to share specific information about the student you sponsor. For example, if they are in danger of withdrawing from the program, we will notify you with general information about what steps CoEd is taking and what you can do to help the student. The specifics of the student’s situation, however, will not be shared with you. Thank you for understanding and helping us to protect the students.

All correspondence is monitored by the Rise Program staff for appropriateness of content and the privacy of both students and sponsors. We have a significant obligation to protect both the students and you, the sponsor. To do that best, we do not allow the following forms of communication with sponsored students: Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, other social media, instant messaging, phone, or any other direct communication outside of supervised visits during CoEd trips and letters and emails overseen by CoEd. We post updates on Rise Program activities frequently on Facebook, Instagram, and our blog, so feel free to follow us for more real-time updates.

To protect your privacy and ensure that all communication with students is appropriate, correspondence must be routed through CoEd. We also ask that you do not include any kind of contact information (address, phone number, email, etc.) in your correspondence.

Violation of this policy could jeopardize a student’s eligibility for sponsorship and your eligibility to be a sponsor.

Your sponsorship helps pay for a student’s participation in CoEd’s Rise Youth Development program. A typical student’s participation costs approximately $960 per year, on average. Each student incurs a different level of expense, based on a number of factors such as: student’s location, tuition/supply costs,  the frequency with which you and they communicate, and the amount of social and academic support needed to help them reach their full potential.  So, while we work with averages to make the program as cost-efficient as possible, in actuality, a student’s costs could be higher or lower than this. The relative cost of a typical student’s participation in the program is broken out above.

Great question – and it comes down to the unique way that CoEd’s Rise program completely changes the trajectory of our students’ futures. CoEd’s program is both a true scholarship program and a comprehensive youth development program. We cover the costs of tuition, uniform, books, supplies, etc, along with all of the built-in support that comes with the Youth Development Program: parental education, teacher mentors, experienced social workers and psychologists, workshops on topics like interviewing and healthy relationships, leadership opportunities that allow students to organize and pay it forward to their own communities, and one-on-one monitoring of each student to ensure that academic and social barriers can be surmounted. All these direct costs add up to an average of $960 per student, so that’s what we charge.

By contrast, many sponsorship organizations work mainly with younger children in kindergarten through 6th grade. These are the years in most countries where education is FREE. So they have no tuition costs. In many cases, those kids would be going to school anyway. Their sponsorship, then, pays for other services needed by the families and kids, like backpacks and shoes, depending on the country and situation. Because there is no tuition, it’s much lower cost, but also much lower impact. Most of the kids they serve would be going to school anyway, even without their services.

By contrast, CoEd works at the secondary level of education (7th-12th grades), which is not free in Guatemala. We focus on students that are dropping out or have dropped out, and help them stay in school – a true scholarship. Keep in mind that only one out of 10 impoverished children in Guatemala will reach the critical milestone of high school graduation; CoEd’s Rise Program is helping the other nine get there – through tuition and the social and academic support needed to overcome overwhelming barriers to their success. Yes, this is more costly, but the impact is tremendous: Over time, we create a critical mass of high school and college educated people in rural communities—a middle class—that has never been there before and wouldn’t be there without Rise sponsors. Every year, we produce more and more graduates, until eventually we start seeing tipping points in communities, where attitudes and expectations for the future change. Where girls getting educated becomes the norm, not the exception. Where everyone you know has graduated from high school. Where people can provide for their families. Where there is a growing middle class.

Changing communities changes Guatemala. Changing Guatemala changes the world – all for just $960 per year. We think that’s actually a pretty great deal, and we hope you do too.

• Full Sponsorship – $80 USD ($100 CAD) per month. A full sponsor is the sole sponsor for a student.
• Half Sponsorship – $40 USD ($50 CAD) per month. A student has two half sponsors. If you want to become a half sponsor, we encourage you to find the other half sponsor by asking family or friends. This is a great way to ensure that we don’t end up with students only partially sponsored, and it’s an easy way to spread the word to those in your network about the meaningful opportunity to change a child’s life.

Automatic Payments from your Credit Card
CoEd encourages sponsors to make automatic payments. You can enroll in automatic payments online (www.coeduc.org) or by phone (513-661-7000), and your credit card will be charged automatically each month. You may cancel your automatic payments at any time by contacting CoEd. If you pay for your sponsorship automatically online, you will receive an automatic email receipt after the first payment is processed. You will also receive an annual contribution summary each January for tax purposes.

One-Time Online Payments
You can also make one-time payments online by clicking “Donate” at the top of the page.

Check
Please make checks payable to “Cooperative for Education.”

If you pay annually by check, you will receive a tax acknowledgement letter at the time of your payment, and you will receive an invoice for the following year’s payment around the same time you paid the following year.

If you pay monthly by check, you will receive an annual contribution summary each January. In order to keep our administrative costs low, we will not send a separate letter for each monthly payment.

If you would like to change your payment method, please contact CoEd at (513) 661-7000 or info@coeduc.org.

Donations are tax-deductible in the US and Canada. CoEd is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the USA and Canadian Friends of Cooperative for Education is a registered charity in Canada.

Yes.

If for some reason the student you sponsor ends up not continuing in school, we will assign you a new student and notify you of the change.

60%+ = Pass
Passing at a 60% is very much the norm in Guatemala. Most students achieve around a 60%.

75% = CoEd Standard
A 75% is CoEd’s aim for students. Because we want our Rise scholars to thrive (not just pass) academically, we set the bar at 75% and do all we can to help our students succeed.

Although Guatemalan students’ classroom performance is graded on a 1-100% scale, the expectation for “passing” is much lower. Students must achieve a 60% to pass. Without any grade inflators, it is very common for students to fail a course. In fact, in some schools, 70% of students fail at least one course. The very top students typically have averages somewhere around 80%-85%, and it is almost unheard of for them to score in the 90’s. This is much different from the American grading scale, where students aim for an “A” at 90%.

Using the below color codes, CoEd internally identifies at-risk students and then takes the necessary steps to ensure that they’re given the resources they need to get back on track.

Green: Passing all of their classes
Orange: Failing one class
Red: Failing more than one class

The Local Facilitators on staff also meet regularly with teachers to communicate about any academic challenges and identify at-risk students early in the quarter, so we can reach out before it’s too late for them to bring up their grades.

We also meet with the student individually to further investigate causes of their poor grades and to help the student come up with a plan for improvement. Sometimes we also test for learning disabilities to be able to best target our assistance.

When a student moves out of at-risk status, we often write a congratulatory letter to students and their parents recognizing their effort, and provide a small gift.

The school year in Guatemala starts in February and goes until October/November.

During the final year of the student’s Rise Sponsorship, we will send you some of their favorite memories of their time in the Rise Program. If you’d like to celebrate with the student you sponsor in person, we invite you to check out the following year’s February Tours, where we will set aside time to celebrate with recent graduates. If you have a recurring payment set up, we will match you with a new incoming student after the student you currently sponsor graduates. Your recurring payment will continue unless we hear otherwise from you.

CoEd makes every effort to ensure that, with your support, all of the students in our program are set up for success all the way to high school graduation. However, situations outside of our control can occasionally force an end to a student’s participation in the program. The top four reasons a student may not continue in the program are:

1. The student fails the school year academically and hasn’t shown sufficient effort/interest in getting back on track.
2. The student loses interest in school and no amount of convincing can change their mind. Often this is coupled with lack of support from parents.
3. The (typically female) student gets married and she and/or her spouse decide she won’t continue studying.
4. There’s a serious change at home and the student decides to take on more responsibilities like working or taking care of younger siblings (e.g. a parent dies or moves to work somewhere else). We try to help them think through other options in these situations and offer additional temporary financial support if necessary, but sometimes their minds are made up or they have no other choice.

CoEd purposefully selects students with the greatest need—if 100 percent of students graduated from the program, this would indicate that we were not choosing the students with the greatest need. Read on to learn more about what the students in our program are up against.

We will notify you if the student you sponsor and their family have decided to leave the program, but due to confidentiality, we may not be able to disclose specific details as to why. We will automatically assign you another student in need of a sponsor and pass that information along to you.

We often make the assumption that if students have the tuition money to continue in school, they should easily graduate high school. However, the reality facing Guatemalan families paints a more nuanced picture of how truly remarkable it is when any student graduates successfully. Our students are facing such issues as generational poverty, a pressure to get married young or to contribute to the family’s income by working, social challenges such as alcoholism and domestic violence, low expectations, and a lack of medical care. You can read more about each of these issues here.

We understand the desire to continue to help the student you sponsor after they’ve left the Rise Program. It’s part of the same drive that motivated you to be a sponsor in the first place! But, for the reasons below, we cannot offer continued support of students after they’ve left the program.

A high school credential is enough in Guatemala to gain a good job as a professional and to enter the middle class. You’ve given a student the opportunity to make it on their own, and that’s an amazing gift. Additionally, the university system in Guatemala is much less centralized than in the United States and other Western countries. Many students will take one or two courses at a time, while still working, and spend many years (sometimes decades!) completing their degree. Statistically, students with a high school education are capable of working, supporting themselves and their families, and pursuing further education themselves if they choose to.

In the event that the student you sponsor left the program before graduation, we are unable to offer the opportunity to continue supporting them. Resources are limited, and we want to put them where they will be most effective, which is with students that are able to meet the program’s expectations. If CoEd or its donors continue to financially support students that are out of compliance with program norms, we would be sending the wrong message to our beneficiaries, and undermining the good work that sponsors make possible. Additionally, foreign payments to individuals within Guatemala are often burdensome for the sender, and may put the recipient at risk. We would not want to put you or the individuals we serve in a compromising situation.

We understand that financial and personal situations change. You are free to end your sponsorship at any time with our gratitude for your generosity. Please contact us at (513) 661-7000 or at rise@coeduc.org as soon as possible so we can try to find a new sponsor for the student you sponsored. Until a new sponsor is found, CoEd will support the costs associated with keeping the student in school.

Guatemala is a beautiful Central American country with rich history and cultural traditions. It also has also one of the most extreme combinations of systemic poverty, illiteracy, and inequality in the hemisphere. Below are some quick facts about Guatemala:

• The Country
  • Nickname: The land of the eternal spring
  • Area: 42,042 (about the size of Ohio)
  • Main Exports: Coffee, sugar, bananas
  • Topography: Tropical rainforests, beaches, volcanoes (one of the most volcanically active countries in the world)
• The People
  • Population: 17.7 million, the most populous country in Central America
  • Ethnicity: About 42% Indigenous Maya, 56% Ladino (those of mixed or European descent), 2% Indigenous Xinca, and less than 1% Garífuna (a group with African and Indigenous heritage)
  • Languages: Spanish, 21 Mayan languages, and two languages spoken by non-Mayan tribes on the coast (Garífuna and Xinca)
• Education
  • 1 out of 3: Number of Indigenous Guatemalans who are illiterate
  • 25%: High school enrollment rate in Guatemala
  • 4.8 years: The average educational level of an Indigenous Guatemalan adult
  • 122 out of 139: Guatemala’s ranking in quality of the educational system
• Economy
  • 79%: Percentage of Indigenous Guatemalans living below the country’s poverty line
  • $4 a day: The average daily earnings of a rural Guatemalan family
  • Inequality: Guatemala has one of the most unequal distributions of wealth in the world
• How Rise Sponsorships Help
  • 9% more earned for each additional year of study
  • $2.82 earned by a high school graduate for every dollar earned by a Guatemalan with no education
  • 90% of CoEd Rise Program participants who complete middle school will go on to graduate from high school

Sources: UNICEF, World Bank, UNDP Human Development Report, UNESCO, PREAL, World Economic Forum, Guatemala Ministry of Education, UN Millennium Development Goals 2010