A licence to kill it!
| The Chaptops Tech Center in Tactic received final approval for our application to teach courses in computer skills and English! Our students will receive official certificates issued by the Ministry of Education. We hope to enroll 30 students in our first classes in January. – We received a license to teach three certificated courses: – Basic EnglishKeyboarding – Business Computing Skills The courses will meet for 10 hours per week for approximately five months. The tuition for the computer courses will be $13 per month, and English courses will cost $32 per month. As you know, even those amounts are challenging for many families, so we hope to offer full and partial scholarships to as many students as possible. We’d like to start teaching all three classes in January with ten students each. Our campaign goal of $2000 will pay enrollment fees and tuition for all of them for three months. Especially since it’s our first time, we’d like to be able to advertise scholarships at local and village schools before the school year ends in October. As a sign of local interest in our work, our landlord has been investing in us by giving a significant discount on our rent. And as a sign of our success, he recently told us “Wow, you are doing amazingly well! I’m going to charge you market rent now!” Success has its perils! If you want to help needy students in Tactic:· – $39 will cover three months of tuition for one keyboarding or computer skills student.· – And $65 will cover all five months.· – $96 will cover an English student’s tuition for three months.· – $170 will buy a refurbished laptop for the academy lab. – $260 will cover our 33% rent increase (which starts immediately) until the end of 2025. You can donate securely through our PayPal Giving Fund link: https://www.paypal.com/US/fundraiser/charity/4632825 — no fees for you or us! If you have interested friends who might need a little more background about Chaptops, you can refer them to our GoFundMe project: https://gofund.me/3a1007ef — fees for us, tipping for the donor. We promise to kill it with your support! |
 Cofounder Byron Cap and team members Guillermo Cantoral and Julio Herrera. |  Julio and Guillermo (left) performing maintenance on computers for GSSG Scholars (right). Guatemalan Student Support Group rents 19 laptops for its students. |
 New Board Member Drew Birnbaum spent much of August in Tactic teaching a very full schedule of English classes. Back home in West Virginia, Drew volunteers to teach English to immigrants. |  Julio playing a word game with younger English students. Drew and Julio both enjoy languages, and Drew is teaching Julio French. |
| People We have had several comings and goings since last spring. Staff members Milsan Quej and Oscar Buc left us at the end of last year with our thanks for their good services. In addition to his paid position, Oscar helped as a volunteer while the center was being organized. Julio Herrera joined us early in 2024 and is now Director of the Academía de Cursos Libres CHAPTOPS. He put an incredible effort to get us through the frustrating hoops to establish the Academy. |
| Thank you for your support! Not to pat ourselves on the back… OK, that’s exactly what’s happening. I personally want to thank Cofounder Byron Cap for the vision of creating the Academy. My first thought was “OMG! I just want to send down some retired laptops.” But he brought the idea up over and over. I’m not sure how many times I’ve said in this newsletter that’s it’s about to open any time. Julio Herrera put a lot of time into developing detailed curricula for the Ministry — and taking the bus to Cobán repeatedly to be told things like “All good, you just need a fire extinguisher!” and then “Good job on the fire extinguisher, but we noticed you didn’t …” Our donors deserve a big pat on the back, too! We would be nowhere without large laptop donations from Metabolon and Syngenta and thousands in cash from our individual donors. You’ve paid all sorts of start-up and capital expenses. And more recently, we’ve been using cash to buy refurbished computers. As always our goal is to pay rent, utilities, wages, and supplies from local revenues, and the students we serve in Tactic have made that financially possible. I hope you are proud of us, and proud of yourselves! We hope you can continue to support us beyond this inflection point for Chaptops. Thanks, Rex Dwyer, Cofounder and Executive Director for the entire team: Byron, Julio, Guille and the board: Byron, Casson, Drew, Fredy. and Greg https://www.paypal.com/US/fundraiser/charity/4632825 |
