In 1999, Beth Neville Evans, founder of the Ixtatan Foundation, visited San Mateo Ixtatan for the first time on behalf of a North American nonprofit organization attempting to help a resident of the town with a life-threatening medical condition. She discovered a town that was a microcosm, high in the Guatemalan mountains where the residents spoke a unique language, Chuj. This language is the predominate tongue used by approximately 64,000 Mayans, the majority of them residing in San Mateo Ixtatan. As one of the many indigenous groups of Mayans in Guatemala, these people find themselves among the lowest on the socio-economic ladder, lacking in many basic services and with few opportunities to improve their situation. This was starkly evidenced by the lack of any high school education facility in the entire region. As a result of her visit and ongoing conversations with the community leaders in San Mateo Ixtatan, Beth Neville created the Ixtatan Foundation, a 501(c) 3 nonprofit Ixtatán Foundation, Inc. incorporated in January of 2001, with the expressed goal of creating the first high school in the town. The school opened its doors in January 2005 with 11 students for high school and 21 in middle school and saw its first graduating class three years later when nine students received high school diplomas. Seven years on, the school’s most recent graduating class saw 31 students receive high school diplomas, all of whom plan to go on to higher education. Our student body is 280 strong and we have graduates attending, or recently graduated from the following universities: Universidad Rafael Landivar, Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, Universidad del Valle de México, Universidad Panamericana de Guatemala, Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM). Initially based solely in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Ixtatan Foundation added a Guatemalan Office in mid-2012 under the stewardship of Executive Director, Elias Alonzo, who had won a scholarship from the Ixtatan Foundation to attend Toccoa Falls College from 2005 to 2008. While the formation of the high school was the impetus for the formation of the Foundation, education in general is the primary goal. In 2012 the curriculum was adapted to reflect Project Based Learning philosophy. The school oversees a working farm, a bakery, carpentry shop, an Internet café and many other workshops; all of which return income to the school as well as providing real world experience for the students.
