SERniña is dedicated to eradicating gender inequality in Guatemala, as well as the disempowerment of girls women and violence towards girls and women.
SERniña by REALgirl was created to be a support program to schools, public programs, and other non-governmental organizations to take on a holistic approach to girls’ empowerment and address the challenging and dangerous issues facing girls in Guatemala, such as low self-esteem rates leading to risky behaviours, girls entering into unhealthy and violent relationships with older men, high pregnancy rates, high dropout rates, high rates of domestic and sexual abuse, and extremely strong societal pressure to have girls/women staying at the home and not pursuing their own futures.
Despite the existence of strong education programs in Guatemala, there exists a void in the current developmental structures of Guatemala –a history of machismo and patriarchal societal structures has left very little focus on girls’ empowerment. Girls in Guatemala face not only challenging but dangerous issues, such as low self-esteem rates leading to risky behaviors, girls entering into unhealthy and violent relationships with older men, high pregnancy rates, high dropout rates, high rates of domestic and sexual abuse, and extremely strong societal pressure to have girls/women staying in the home and not pursing their own futures. Conversations with social workers, psychologists, teachers and mothers revealed that though Guatemala is moving forward on economic and social metrics, programming that explicitly addressed the needs of girls was missing. This was holding back schools, communities, and the country.
SERniña was launched in 2015 to fill that void; it was created to be a support program to schools, public programs, and other non-governmental organizations to take on a holistic approach to girls’ empowerment and address the issues facing girls in Guatemala. SERniña is not its own school, nor an independent program. Instead, it is a support program to provide pre-existing educational organizations with its expertise and services, so educational organizations of Guatemala can fully support the girls in their programs.