Food & fruit for primary schools in Latin America

I hope all is well. It has been a great couple of months on the projects thanks to your generous donations each month. 

Since we started the projects in 2006 in Peru we have supplied the children with daily fruit. We also buy gas each month so they can receive a hot meal with the basic supplies the government provides. Add to this the vegetables that we now grow in the vegetable garden and we are making sure they receive nutritious food each day they are at school. We have seen remarkable positive results with their annual medical check-ups which the doctors confirm is due to the daily fruit and the vegetables from the school garden.

As part of their education the students are taught all the aspects of agriculture in our school vegetable garden. Here they are learning about maintenance and placement of the drip-feed irrigtation system before sewing.

Mother’s Day was celebrated this month with folkloric dance, gifts and food. The day is a welcome respite for the mothers whose gruelling irregular work under the sun from dawn ’til dusk in the chacras (irrigated agricultural fields) is only available for a few days during each crop cycle.

Mother’s Day was also celebrated in the school in Ecuador with lots of traditional dance, gifts and food. As is tradition the fathers do all the preparation and cooking for the mothers. This year the elderly members of the communities were invited too so they could all be involved with the activities.

The land has been prepared and the seeds have been sewn in our 2½ acre (1 hectare) Plan Huerta bean crop. Leftover dried grass from the land clearing remains to protect the young shoots from the cold and the rain. Proceeds from this plan will be shared amongst the community who help out on the land and management costs of Plan Moo.

For those of you in the UK we will be taking on the London Bridges Charity Challenge once again on Saturday 3rd August followed by a reunion in a pub. We plan to walk the fifteen bridges and 12 miles (20km) from Tower Bridge to Putney Bridge where we will have a Phoenix reunion in a pub there. 

As we tick off the bridges we will also take on the Phoenix treasure hunt to find objects and landmarks that are associated with our work in Latin America so feel free to bring the family too. Please let us know by emailing me on dom@thephoenixprojects.org if you are interested in joining us from the start, halfway or even just for the reunion in Putney.

We still have extra spaces for the Patagonia Challenge in November so if you are interested please do let us know as we will need to know final numbers by September and for those of you with Instagram we recently started to update our account once again after a couple of years’ hiatus so please do seek us out on phoenix_flying_2020

Have a great June

Cheers

Links:

• London Bridges Charity Challenge