Among these objectives, ODS 4 promotes quality education and lifelong learning. To this end, support has been given to the project "Educating for life. Guatemala” Coordinated by the professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology José Beltrán Llavador, the project is developed as the last phase of the Watan project, initiated in 2008.

As Beltrán himself explains, "Watan is basically trying to train teachers and set up teacher training, which would be its equivalent there, since this training does not have university rank in Guatemala. Once the objective of designing these studies, endorsing them, tutoring them and building a teaching school was achieved, we thought that the project could have a longer route and that we could diversify it towards a permanent formation", Beltrán affirms.  

After this previous experience and very positive results, the initiative, developed in collaboration with the Valencian NGO Escoles Solidàries and the local counterpart Asociación de Educadores Noroccidentales (AEN), decided to expand its focus of action and diversify its areas of action.  

Thus, from the detection of the absence of personalized attention to students with special educational needs, the project tackles this problem fully, involved in the course of its development to the municipality, agents of change in the area of health or the families themselves from a triple educational approach, inclusive and sustainable has strengthened the educational fabric of Ixcán, a Guatemalan municipality severely punished by war and violence.  

"It has been very exciting to articulate the participation of local agents and prove the high involvement of women and the population in general," says the Sociology professor.  In addition to these initiatives have also articulated scholarship programs for local students, a total of 24, so that they can attend teacher training classes, and has incorporated education in special needs to the curriculum of teachers.

 
The philosophy of lifelong learning, aims to bring to all levels new teaching processes that are incorporated as permanent and continuous learning. "Educating for life.  Guatemala" meets the needs of the most vulnerable Guatemalan population. Thanks to it, 67 children and adolescents with special needs and functional diversity in nine communities have been successfully attended to.  Their families have also been actively involved, through activities parallel to curricular training, and a solid contribution has been made to the construction of life-skills education for young professionals and teachers, through training programmes, awareness-raising and productive ventures.