School History

Mayatan is not your typical private Honduran Biligual School…

Founded in 1991, Mayatan Bilingual School began with the dream of a local Honduran mother, Nora Arita de Welchez, who wanted her children to have a good bilingual education without having to leave their community and family in Copan Ruinas. She encouraged other parents in the community to participate…two other moms, Maria Eugenia Aviles de Arias and Mayra Arias de Welchez, joined her to manage Escuela Mayatan. That first year, nine students enrolled in the first grade. Teachers for the school were mostly English-speaking backpackers enchanted by the small community who wanted to extend their stays. The facilities consisted of one small schoolhouse across the road from the Copan Ruinas’ world class Maya Ruins.

In a country where a bilingual education is hard to attain and available only to small part of the population, Mayatan is one of a handful of institutions that make English learning more accessible to middle and low or no income families. The school started out by filling its classrooms with students whose parents could pay the fees, and then looked for worthy children from poorer families to fill the classroom already in use. After all once they had a teacher; it didn’t cost much more to invite a few more kids in for half the price or for free.

In 2001, with the help and encouragement of Frank Hopkins, then Director of the school, the owners of Mayatan decided to form a non-profit foundation to own and operate the school. Fundacion Mayatan is a registered, tax exempt charity organization in Honduras working to open the doors of opportunity to students across the financial spectrum.

On Mr. Hopkins’ return to the United States he was able to set up a separate non-profit corporation that allows U.S. taxpayers to make tax exempt donations to our school Sponsorship program through his organization Hope for Tomorrow, a 501(c)(3) corporation.

In 2003, through the fund raising efforts of another visionary School director, Lindsay Hill, Fundacion Mayatan was able to build a beautiful new campus just outside of town. The decision to build a new school was made for us… we were asked to move from our first location because it was on top of more ruins. The added space allowed us to add more students… we keep growing and in 2006 we added a primary wing to our campus.

From humble beginnings, Mayatan has grown to become the region’s premier academic establishment. We presently serve 300 students and are still growing. We accept two classes in Pre-Kindergarten each year, and have to turn away applicants to keep our class sizes to 20 students while still maintaining diversity of upper to lower income students in each classroom.