Education for children in Ecuador

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