El Duranzo

El Duranzo

The community of El Duranzo was founded in 2004 , and means “the peach”, although there are very few peaches still found in the community. It is situated 14 kilometers / 8.7 miles north of San Martin Jilotepeque and is spread over an area of 10 kilometers / 6.2 miles. There are 14 families in El Durazno, with a population of 80 people.

The community was formed as a means to have a school built for the children in the area since they had to walk a far distance to the current school. The first president, Emilio Garcia got 6 families together, and with the help of foreign NGO’s and the government a school was built in 2007. The school started with 24 students of all ages. Emilio Garcia is thankful, that from the beginning lots of foreigners had helped to build their community as El Durazno was build up from a scratch. The foreigners helped to realize the school, the main road and potable water. Emilio still has a dream, as the main road is not finished yet and many families at the south side are still not connected by a road, including Emilio´s family. He hopes one day that he can able to finish the road with the other community members.

The current president of EL Duranzo, Juan Francisco Ramos Télon has three children, although they are all under the age of 5 and too young to attend the school. His hope for the community is education for the children, enough facilities for the community members, transportation and hopes that one day all the families will have electricity in their houses. Also he wants to improve the water quality for the community, so it can keep the people in the community healthy.

Currently there are 14 children in the school ranging from 7-12 years old. Juan Francisco Zamora is the principal and has been the only teacher at the school for the past 6 years. He teaches all 14 children (in 6 different grades) in the same class room. It was hard for him in the beginning because of the variety of the grades that he had to teach in the same class room, but he has since figured out a way to teach all the different grades and now he is very happy teaching the children. The 2 bottle school classrooms will be used as a library and the other room to let the children work in groups. 5% of the children who finish the school will continue study at the middle school, and 20% of those ones will continue study at the university. The wish of teacher-principal Juan is that all the children of the school will be able to have a profession and that they will keep on studying to have a better future. Also that more families will come to live in El Durazno and that more projects can be realized to make the community grow, such as better roads, water supply and electricity supply.

Elementary School
Population (approximately): 100
Construction Started: December 12, 2014
Classrooms: 2
Bottle School: 61