Engineering for Mayan Students

Engineering for Mayan Students A NGO founded by two Swedish Engineering Students in order to sustainably increase the influence of the Mayan people in the Guatemalan society.

Plusgiro: 76 21 72-5 In 2015 two engineering students, Sofie Folkesson and Sabina Nordén, had an idea of how to improve the life of Mayan youths whilst cleaning up the environment from plastic trash. They founded the organization 'Engineering for Mayan Students' and established the work with the initiative ’School of trash’. Our mission is to, in an environmental sustainable way, lay ground for th

e empowerment of the Mayan people and to fight poverty with education. According to the UN raising the educational level of people can lift entire communities out of poverty. The Guatemalan educational system is characterized by large inequalities, where Mayan people, especially Mayan girls, are the most disfavored. By raising the educational level among the Mayan people, the oppression of this group will decrease or hopefully even be eliminated. Except for inequalities in the educational system, Guatemala also struggles with lack of waste management. Every year, 2 million tons of waste is produced in Guatemala, of which the most is plastic. Nonetheless, only 20 percent of this trash is collected by the government, meaning that the rest ends up in nature or is burnt in the backyard. This causes direct health- and environmental problems.The Mayan people have been highly affected by the climate change as most of them live from agriculture. We have seen evidence of this almost everywhere in Guatemala, where families have had to find other ways to support themselves because of poor harvests. These are the main reasons to why we believe in building schools out of plastic trash. Our technique is cheap, simple and includes usage of plastic bottles stuffed with inorganic waste as insulation in walls. By constructing schools in this way the amount of plastic waste removed from nature is 2,5 tons for every school built. The initiative 'School of trash' raises awareness of environmental and equality issues locally, but also globally through our channels. We believe that change in governmental strategies must come from the people, which is why we believe that educating the public is a first step towards a more sustainable world.

14/04/2019

Hello everyone!

As you might have noticed, there have been some changes here on our page, and now we can finally tell you why. During the time we spent in Guatemala in 2016 we met Marietta, an incredible Guatemalan woman who shared so many of our values and visions. Marietta has been running her own projects in Guatemala, and throughout the years we have supported each other a lot. Thus, she has also become a very dear friend of ours, which is why we now are taking this friendship and collaboration one step further. We are merging our organisations into one – ECOespiral. Marietta is becoming our partner and we couldn’t be happier about that.

All three of us have learnt so much during these years, and we are facing new challenges that we are more than ready to take on together. Our new organisation will focus on Environmental Regeneration and Integral Human Development in rural communities in Guatemala. Our mission is to improve the situation for the people in vulnerable situations in Guatemala whilst contributing to ecological resilience of ecosystems. So, even though we have loved working with the SchoolofTrash concept and will keep supporting the schools that we have collaborated with, we see new challenge that we need to tackle in other ways than building schools. We hope that you all want to follow our exciting journey on our new page ECOespiral :)

Hugs,
The ECOespiral Team

We work with Environmental Regeneration and Integral Human Development in rural communities in Guatemala.

Last night we met with Amanda who is studying Sustainable Urban Design at . This spring she is writing her master thesi...
21/02/2019

Last night we met with Amanda who is studying Sustainable Urban Design at . This spring she is writing her master thesis for our organization ☀ in April she will leave for Tecpán to spend two months building the playground for our future Development Center as well designing our bio-construction volunteer house and its surroundings, with a focus on permaculture and self-sustaining solutions 🌱

We’re finally changing the name of the organization after some structural changes☀️All documents sent to Skatteverket ✅ ...
14/02/2019

We’re finally changing the name of the organization after some structural changes☀️All documents sent to Skatteverket ✅ Exciting times with our new partner 🌱

10/02/2019

Last week, Marietta went back to visit the school of which Simon and Eveline project led the construction last year. Amazing to see this beautiful bottle school welcoming new kids 💕🌱

Thank you Kathleen Price and for donating 80 desks, 80 chairs, 3 cafeteria tables and a lot of other school material fo...
29/01/2019

Thank you Kathleen Price and for donating 80 desks, 80 chairs, 3 cafeteria tables and a lot of other school material for the school that is in the making in Tecpán. We are so happy about this collaboration 💛 @ Tecpán Guatemala

Say hi to David, Mathilda, Emma, Clara and Oliva ⭐⭐⭐ our superheroes who will support us with their digital marketing ex...
25/01/2019

Say hi to David, Mathilda, Emma, Clara and Oliva ⭐⭐⭐ our superheroes who will support us with their digital marketing expertise during 5 weeks 💪💪

We are so excited 🎉🎈

Workshop day and celebrations in Tecpán this weekend🌱🎉We had a Biology workshop held by Erick and Rocio, a breathing wor...
24/01/2019

Workshop day and celebrations in Tecpán this weekend🌱🎉
We had a Biology workshop held by Erick and Rocio, a breathing workshop with Rigel, and a "Art from the forest" workshop held by Paulina 🐾🐯🌱
And the delicious food was donated by Pueblo Real Tecpán 🍝 @ Tecpán Guatemala

Today we held a Skype presentation as an introduction to our new collaboration with During five weeks from now, we will...
21/01/2019

Today we held a Skype presentation as an introduction to our new collaboration with

During five weeks from now, we will participate in a course in media design at Södertörns Högskola. Our organization has been chosen as one out of ten projects that the students will work on during five weeks. The students will help us with digital marketing material for our new volunteer program. Very exciting ⭐⭐⭐

Administration month! ⭐Sofie is spending January in Paris working on administrative stuff related to the organization. A...
10/01/2019

Administration month! ⭐

Sofie is spending January in Paris working on administrative stuff related to the organization. As a lot of things are changing within the organization at the moment, a lot of administrative stuff needs to be prepared. But it will soon pay off 🌱

The kids in Tecpán who usually participate in Marietta's workshops have gotten pen-pals in their age in Amsterdam📝📨 The ...
02/01/2019

The kids in Tecpán who usually participate in Marietta's workshops have gotten pen-pals in their age in Amsterdam📝📨 The students in Amsterdam have collected money to support the school construction in Tecpán, and now they are writing letters to each other. This time, it's a Christmas greeting 🎄 @ Tecpán Guatemala

27/12/2018

A little Christmas greeting from Guatemala 🎈🎄

We wish you all a Merry Christmas, with a lot of love and hugging 🎅🏾❤
24/12/2018

We wish you all a Merry Christmas, with a lot of love and hugging 🎅🏾❤

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