Blossoms of Guyana

Blossoms of Guyana renovates the schools' libraries to create safe and inviting spaces for students to learn to read. In addition, we donate enough books so that each student in the school has access to books. We also provide media equipment such as computers, projectors, and printers to create media centers within each school. To address the issue of low funding, we also provide teaching supplies and school supplies to teachers and students. Our goal is to provide the necessary resources that will allow teachers to teach and students to learn in safe and encouraging environments with the goal of improving educational outcomes of the students.

To ensure that we are working the right partners, we conduct an in person visit of each school prior to bringing them on board as a partner school. During our visit, we speak with the principal and at least one teacher. We identify the primary needs of the schools and determine a plan and a time line for completing our work. Our target schools are schools where the majority of students are low income and schools that are not currently receiving financial support from another organization.

Part of our work entails completing site visits each year by our board members. During our annual trips, we visit each school and meet with teachers, staff and students.

Our board and volunteers are made up of highly skilled educators and professionals. Our board members and advisory board members include teachers with over 15 years of experience in the classroom. We leverage this expertise when designing reading programs for our schools or selecting books to donate to schools.

In addition to our professional expertise, our board is made up of individuals that are from Guyana. This provides us with the cultural knowledge needed to be successful when working with the schools. Our personal connection to Guyana, also allows us to be able to connect with individuals living in Guyana that act as liaisons and volunteers. This allows us to increase our impact in the schools and provides first hand knowledge of the culture.

Since our founding in 2009, we have donated over 8,200 books to schools in Guyana. We have impacted over 4,584 students through our work with nine schools, renovating four school libraries, and donating over 20 pieces of euipment. Our goal is to continue working with additional schools. We have also begun providing stipends to reading specialists working at one of our partner schools. This additional resource has allowed for focused attention on students who are struggling to read. Working with these students has resulted in improvements in the reading levels of the students. Given this improvement, we hope to expand this resource to all of the schools we work with to help improve educational outcomes of students.