Connecting Educational Communities is an 8 credit program of the Foreign Languages and Literatures department of Portland State University. This class takes students and bilingual educators from the Portland metropolitan area to the beautiful mountainous state of Sololá, Guatemala.

Before traveling to Guateamala we raise funds for development projects in the schools and gather educational supplies to take with us. For the three weeks we are in Guatemala, we spend mornings assisting in a variety of projects and activities in rural Mayan schools while afternoons are spent studying Spanish and classes in Guatemalan history and culture in small groups with local teachers and experts. Weekends we take excursions; the past three years we have visited the Mayan ruins at Copan and Tikal as well as the Livingston and Rio Dulce regions.