Food & fruit for primary schools in Latin America

I hope all is well with you. We’re almost at the end of the first quarter of 2019; time is flying by! We are now in the second phase of our 25-year cycle; 1) introducing education, 2) introducing sustainable plans to help cover costs of the projects whilst continuing to cover the costs through donations and 3) with the projects sustainable we will concentrate on employment generation for the graduates.

For many years we have introduced education to hundreds of children and seen them continue from primary school, through secondary school and college so for us now to be in the stage where are adding in sustainable plans whilst continuing to cover costs is a huge advance from when we started. Thank you to you all for helping us get this far and for continuing to support us in the future. All our projects aim to have some element of daily food for the children and by implementing sustainable plans based on vegetable gardens and similar, this can only be a good thing for the students.

It is Charity Challenge season once again and we will be heading to Perú and Ecuador in May to raise funds for all our projects so please do support the challenge by donating to this page.

Our school got off to a great start in Itzapa, Guatemala with all eight grades of classrooms full and being taught by our local teachers, most of whom came through the system with us from the start (phase 1!). Just the other day we bumped into two of our female students who started with us back in the early 2000’s and who we managed to get experience with a local accountancy firm a few years back: they are both now formally employed with that firm, earning critical income for their families back in the community. 

A brilliant start to our projects in and around Copán, Honduras with the main college welcoming more students from seven different communities, many walking hours each day to receive an education. Our satellite school in Barbasco and its new classrooms got underway with three secondary school grades now being taught this year. We will also be supporting a new school in La Pintada, mainly with school materials and hopefully later in the year with more local teachers.

The second half of the school year in Ecuador got underway in January with our three local Phoenix teachers doing a sterling job. We are succeeding getting the local community more involved not just with the school though with sustainable plans for the future, with great success with the upcoming “fiambre” feast being organized which we will be putting some money towards.

Our project in Perú was our last school to get underway this month after the holidays and the number of children is impressive in our project out in the desert around Arequipa. Edyluz ran an excellent summer school during January to help those children who hadn’t gone back to the altiplano and their families with their studies and what they struggled with during 2018 and preparing them for 2019.

Thank you and all the best for the next few months and we will update you on the goings on, especially the Perú and Ecuador challenges! Cheers