Pencils of Promise (PoP) believes every child should have access to quality education. We create schools, programs, and global communities around the common goal of education for all.

Pencils of Promise is one of the fastest growing nonprofits in the country. Founded with only $25 dollars, in less than three years PoP has broken ground on more than 60 schools in Laos, Nicaragua and Guatemala and delivered more than 1M education hours. Together, we build sustainable schools, partnerships and solutions to enable basic education for underserved children in the developing world. We are proof that a generation empowered will empower the world: one child, one pencil at a time.

 

Our Approach

1. Identify - We work with the Ministry of Education, local government, and area NGOs to identify communities with high educational infrastructure needs. As a US-based organization, we find it essential to collaborate with existing institutions in order to fully understand the situation on the ground and create lasting changes.
    
2. Build - As part of the villages’ display of commitment to education, they agree to provide 10-20% of the build costs, typically in the form of materials and labor. From the beginning, this offers the villages a greater sense of ownership over their school. We also use local materials, driving the local economy and ensuring that the structures we build are high quality, affordable, and designed with appropriate consideration for local geographies and culture.
    
3. Support - We design PoP involvement to be 100% sustainable. From day one, we ensure that the village views the school as theirs and takes ownership of its ongoing maintenance and support. Beyond building a school, we also offer the following education programs to our communities.
    
4. Hire - PoP provides its local staff with professional development training to empower staff members (many of whom are females and minorities) to grow as professionals and take on leadership and mentorship roles. To learn more about a few of the 40+ the inspiring local women and men who develop and execute our programs on the ground, check out their stories below.
    
5. Monitor - To best judge how effective our impact is, we closely monitor and evaluate (M&E) our programs on the ground. We have local M&E teams who conduct interviews and surveys with village leaders, teachers, students, and parents. This help us to understand the needs of villages in which we operate, our impact on the community, and areas in which we can improve PoP operations and programming.