Enhancing adolescent Mayan girls’ education through peer support

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to evaluate how peer support can contribute to the completion of secondary school for girls who have interrupted their education, so that they can achieve higher levels of schooling through a supportive community network in villages of the Yucatan peninsula in southeast Mexico. For this purpose, qualitative social science research methodology was used with a participatory approach. The findings demonstrated that beyond existing school reintegration programs, it is the strength of purpose in the girls’ minds and the influence of the people that surround them that determines the degree of success or failure. The originality of this research is to be found in the collection of primary information from groups of adolescents regarding aspects that encourage them to reach, or stop them from reaching, higher levels of education, while compiling the intervention of key actors in the communities in favor of girls’ education in the state of Yucatan.