Education for children in Ecuador

With the school off for holidays we are undertaking maintenance, including adding water piping into the school and the community is busy laying pipes for their houses in the communities. We are adding another teacher when school starts up again next month, Zoila´s daughter, to bring the teacher/class ratio down even further. To celebrate graduations this year we paid for our first trip to the beach with the graduating students and their parents which was an experience for all!

As ever June was Inti Raymi month celebrating the sun (Inti) where the children and the community got involved with dance and tradition. Finally, well done and a huge thank you to our charity challengers who scaled Imbabura and Fuya Fuya and circumnavigated Lake Cuicocha with the local families and teachers back in June. We’re doing it all again in 2020 – for information please see below!

Business can play a huge role in education, employment generation and supporting communities and is an area where we, as Phoenix, would like to explore further over the coming years to benefit the countries in Latin America – not just our projects though other communities as well. If you would like more information on how your company could get involved in the future please do contact me on dom@thephoenixprojects.org

Our recent Whole Foods Market trip in Guatemala saw them visiting their micro-credit partners in Huehuetenango, funding and helping to build a kitchen for a family at Lake Atitlán and reforesting an area on Pacaya Volcano.

Following on from our excellent Phoenix Charity Challenges in Perú and Ecuador we will be doing it all again in 2020 with the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu dates from Saturday 23rd-30th May and Ecuador volcanoes from Saturday 30th May-6th June. It is a fantastic way to economically tick off Machu Picchu and volcano hiking from your bucket list whilst raising funds for Phoenix! We will need confirmations of places for the Inca Trail by the end of September so if you are interested please follow the link below and please do contact us soon so you don’t miss out as there are limited places on the trail.

Links:

• Charity Challenges in Ecuador and Peru 2020

I hope all is well with you. 

In Ecuador it wasn’t just teaching that was the highlight of the past few months. Mother’s Day was celebrated with lots of dance, including La Bomba de Chota, food and games to celebrate their well-deserved day!

Each Easter the traditional Fanesca (a soup made from different types of beans, dried fish and boiled eggs) is served in the school. This year we shared responsibilities with the parents in buying the ingredients and the mothers cooked an amazing feast. 

Our local Phoenix teacher David continued to spend time with the parents whenever there is a community meeting to talk about literacy and numeracy. Many parents have difficulties with these simple rights, especially the older generations.

Finally Pawkar Raymi was celebrated, thanking Pachamama (Mother Earth) for the first crops of the year (which are then eaten communally!). More community meetings were held to talk about the school, sustainable plans and the future as our local Phoenix teachers continued to excel.  

Over the next five years we aim to continue investing in family sustainable income plans which help cover the costs of further education, medical costs and of course income for food for the whole family. Some of the income will go towards covering the projects’ costs too as we aim to increase our work in all the countries! Examples of successful plans include Plan Moo (cows), Plan Huerto (vegetable gardens), Plan Pollo (chickens) and Plan Negocio (small businesses). Hundreds of families have benefited from the plans over the past few years and we plan to triple this numbers over the next few years.

We completed our two Charity Challenges in the past couple of weeks for all our projects, completing the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu in Perú followed by climbing volcanoes in Ecuador, each a week long. We managed to raise some fantastic funds for the projects and will be repeating the challenges next year with the Perú challenge in the week of 25^th May and Ecuador in the week of 1^st June 2020. If you are interested in joining us please do contact me on dom@thephoenixprojects.org and it will be great to have you on board!

Thank you and all the best for the next few months and let us know if you are interested in joining us on the Charity Challenges next year in Ecuador and Perú!

Cheers