Our radio silence
was due to heavy work these weeks, plus a week off for Semana Santa (21-26th
march) when the school was closed. The week before the school had just received
missing school materials, the materials are delivered freely by the Government
as families can’t afford to buy it. However it often happens that there is a
delay, and school started around the 18th of January whilst this so
needed materials were received two months after. A lot of catching up for the
students!
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| Easter Break! |
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| Easter Break |
On the school front
we had to reduce a little our activities as we are low on staff, so until our
team grows stronger we hold activities three times per week plus our weekly
visits to the Kitchen Garden project and other interactions with the community.
Sudoko, recycling and manual works, as
painting and doing origami, have keept us busy on the activities front whilst we are
working on getting new laptops on one hand (immediate solution), to continue
our precious IT classes, and to have an IT center on its way (long term
project).The kids keep on asking for the IT classes and they know we are
working on it. Searching for partners, donors, projects and entities that can
reach out for us have taken up a chunk of my time. We are advancing with contacts and confident to have both
immediate and long-term solutions figured out very soon.
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| Learning the colours in english, our models?Coloured baloons hanged on the board :) |
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| Creativity! |
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| Sudoku and simple maths for smaller ones |
There is also news
of several members joining the team for the next months and this will allow the
activities to go back to its regular flow, you will get the news and pics of
the newly arrived first hand.
The Kitchen Garden
project has registered encouraging results and the participants are enthusiastic. We have
welcomed 7 new families this month, which take us up to 15 participating
families, with one candidate family we will visit next week. Our weekly visits
are extended to after sundown so that from around 4 PM to 6.30 PM we can cover
the maximum number of families, keeping a rotation system so at least once in two weeks every family receives a visit. This has been proven a challenge
but the support is essential, and not even the inevitable mosquito attacks in
the kitchen gardens after sundown can keep us from getting where we need to be.
Edwin, our local technical volunteer, also shows signs of no fatigue when it
comes to instruct, help and assist, it is great to count on his support!
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| Olga Ical's Kitchen Garden, welcome to the project! |
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| Candelaria working on extending the Kitchen Garden space before planting |
We have also
identified two new grantees this month, so we are already supporting another student
pursuing her studies in Diversificado (one of the only girls in the community reaching this level of education) and finalizing the procedure to assist
another student who asked support to keep studying at Basico level.
This week will also
be shorter as one of our co-funders and I am meeting some partners in Guatemala
City, so we can advance on our partnerships and solutions, which will benefit
the community in the longer term. I hope to shorty have good news on this to
post.
On a last note, we
had access to some interesting numbers on the last census (10.06.2015)…if you
were re-directed here from our facebook post this is the end of your crusade!
The communities of Nueva Mercedes and La ceiba (were we implement our projects)
amount to 568 people, 106 families. Learning that our community has grown so
much (our last numbers indicated 300/400 people) fills us up with energy so
that our projects might reach more and more people who are interested in
participating.
On the school front
we had to reduce a little our activities as we are low on staff, so until our
team grows stronger we hold activities three times per week plus our weekly
visits to the Kitchen Garden project and other interactions with the community.
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