Food & fruit for primary schools in Latin America

The first harvest in our fully-irrigated Plan Huerto is underway in Perú with the vegetables being used for meals for the children and the elderly. We are still in the trial period to find out which vegetables grow well in the desert conditions and have started hydroponic systems for herbs and strawberries. This is a major step forward for our projects in Perú, where we also provide daily fruit, and for the healthy diets of the children.

We have resumed purchasing cows in Plan Moo which will sustainably cover the teachers’ salaries in the coming years. The sales of milk will provide regular sustainable income for the school which will be used to cover local teachers' salaries and supplement the food programme. This month we will be refurbishing the school kitchen which has definitely seen better days!

This year The Phoenix Projects are celebrating twenty years in Latin America and thanks to you around five thousand children, teenagers and adults have been able to receive a quality education during this time in Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Perú and previously in Brazil, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

We have built schools, extra classrooms, kitchens and energy efficient stoves, provided employment for dozens of local people, planted hundreds of thousands of trees, distributed educational materials, daily meals and hundreds of tonnes of fruit and implemented sustainable income plans on an average annual budget of around £85,000/$100,000.

Additionally, over three hundred families have benefitted from the implementation of sustainable income plans including cows, chickens, weaving, vegetables and small businesses.

To celebrate our 20^th Anniversary we are launching this year’s Appeal today and all donations up to $50/£40 through this page will be matched at 50% by GlobalGiving between Monday 12th September - today - until Friday 16^th September. Larger donations can of course be made although the matching will only apply to the first $50/£40 and only once per individual donor.

We still have so much more we want to do over the coming years with the experience we have gained, including replicating the projects in other communities with sustainable plans covering running costs from the start.

Your continued support in helping to fund local teachers’ salaries and scholarships, school materials, food and sustainable income plans is as important now as it has been in the last twenty years.

We realise that times are uncertain though anything you can donate to the Appeal through this page this week to take advantage of the 50% matching will help us start the next twenty years in the best possible way!

Thank you so much in advance.    

With normal classes back up and running after more than two years in Perú we recently had a great visit from fifty students and five teachers from Impington Village College, Cambridge, UK and thanks to their brilliant fundraising through GlobalGiving we were able to start our first sustainable irrigated vegetable garden which will provide food for the children and local families over the coming years. We also started building a new kitchen (to provide full daily meals for the children) and storage room which will increase the size of the three classrooms (currently cooking and storage is in the actual classrooms) – it is due to finished this week! 

For the first time since 2019 we were able to celebrate Mother’s Day and Day of the Child in May with plenty of dance and food and this time we invited the grandparents to watch their grandchildren perform which was great to see.   

The school year drew to a close this month in Ecuador with all the students graduating or passing on to the next grade. Due to the recent social unrest and national strikes caused by rising living costs the local teachers were unable to travel up to the school for the last two weeks of term so between our local teachers who live in the communities themselves and another teacher who stayed up in the community for the duration of the exams, the students were able to successfully finish the year. As a graduation celebration we paid for the students to take a day out on Lake San Pablo and enjoy a hearty meal. We also celebrated Mother’s Day and Day of the child with plenty of dance and food. Over the coming months we plan to invest in more sustainable plans including Plan Moo and Plan Cuy to help to generate income for the schools and the families; something critical in this time of rising living costs.

The school year continues for all our college students in Honduras with mid-term exams completed. Work was also conducted on the sustainable income plans with smaller versions being started in the communities so the families can grow their own vegetables and generate income. With the global situation causing excessive increases in day-to-day basic living costs these plans will help the families ride the current storm now and into the future. We have seen other local organisations implement our sustainable plan ideas which is a great thing as our funding can only go a small way. By educating other organisations to do the same thing we are all fighting for the same cause which is sustainable education and income for all the families.

In Guatemala we plan to build a new sewing centre for the single mothers in the next couple of months as numbers increase which helps them generate income to be able to feed, clothe and educate their families. Whilst there is demand, donations permitting, we will aspire to do all we can do to help the local families generate their own income.

For all our donors who live in Ireland, Wales and England we are arranging some individual day fundraising hikes and events in September including Dublin on 17th, Kinsale on 19th, Anglesey on 22nd, Chester on 24^th and The Peak District on 26th. If you happen to be in the area and want to join us please do get in touch by replying to this email or heading to the website link at the bottom of this page. As we strive to regain our momentum and funding post-pandemic, fundraising events play such a key role so if you have any in mind, no matter how small or big, please do let us know and thank you so much.

We already have the dates for our major charity challenges in 2023 including The Lost City challenge in Colombia between 6-13^th May and the Inca Trail in Perú between 8-15^th July. If you are interested in either please do get in touch by replying to this email or following the 2023 Charity Challenges link at the bottom of the page.

Thank you all for your continued brilliant support, without which our work would be impossible. We realise the current cost of living crisis has added to the hardships of the past couple of years so everything you can continue to do to support our work is very much appreciated – thank you!

Cheers

Links:

• UK and Ireland September fundraising hikes
• Colombia and Peru Charity Challenges 2023