Fund a teacher and teach a class in Latin America

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 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! Another group were involved with painting projects including educational games on the playground floor and geographical murals as well as essential 1-1 teaching with the students. Thank you very much to all the students’ and teachers’ donors who made this all possible and of course the students and teachers themselves!

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 first Charity Challenge since 2019 was also undertaken with the Inca Trail conquered in late May – the dates are already set for 2023!

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 our scholarship students continue to receive in-class teaching which over the past few months has involved electronics! It is key to receive vocational classes for future jobs. With our sustainable sewing project teaching many single mothers and the vocational subjects the students receive at school we should see many more opportunities in the future to generate income for the local families. Over the coming months we plan to plant more trees on behalf of the students to help with climate change which they themselves will be involved with for their graduation in October. We also plan to build a new sewing centre for the single mothers in the next couple of months as numbers increase. 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

I hope all is well with you. To give us a huge boost this week (Monday 4^th to Friday 8^th April) GlobalGiving will be 50% matching all individual donations to this page of up to $50 which is a fantastic opportunity for the projects as we aim to recover from the past two years and build towards a better sustainable future. If you can it would be fantastic if you could donate this week and your donation will go even further.

With 2022 now three months old it is already very different to the previous two years with all the students back in the classroom finally. We are aiming to maintain all the classrooms secure for daily teaching with cleaning products available. Looking ahead donations permitting, whilst continuing to cover our daily costs of the projects, we aim to make a concerted effort to implement family sustainable income plans with small enterprises over the coming months. Thanks to your continued support we have managed to keep the projects going through these hard times and once again, with your donations, we hope to be in a position to move forwards with confidence – thank you!

In Guatemala our one hundred secondary, college and University scholarship students are finally back in the classroom after two years. Many are mature students with serious underlying health conditions who couldn’t continue studying without the scholarships.

Plans are underway to build a bigger space for our Plan Costura sewing project for single mothers with more mothers entering the programme as the income earned helps them with any extra costs for their children in primary school, like textbooks. We are now helping to cover education from primary school to University, which was our original aim.

This year we are concentrating on college education in Honduras with the students studying various agricultural techniques as part of their course. For the past year we have used a piece of land for them to gain experience in preparation, sewing, maintenance and harvest of various crops. They will use this knowledge for their own family vegetable gardens with proceeds helping the household costs like medicine, food and school supplies.

Also as part of the curriculum the students head out into the communities to give talks to the families covering various topics including hygiene, malnutrition and agricultural techniques. Earlier in the year they weighed infants to check for malnutrition.

Ecuador restarted the second half of the school year in January. Whilst all the other grades returned to full-time daily classes the little ones will continue to come to school two to three times a week for the time being. Pawker Raymi was celebrated asking Pachamama (Mother Earth) for a successful growing season and harvest. It is very important for the community to continue with these traditions stretching back over hundreds of years.

Once the school year finishes in June we will turn our attention to investing in a wide range of sustainable family income enterprises. This extra income will help with daily costs like food which cannot be grown, medicines and extra school supplies as well as further education costs. Our aim is that all education up to and including University will be covered in the communities with these sustainable plans.

Perú finally got back into the classrooms at the end of March for the first time since December 2019. Student numbers have swelled as more families migrate from the altiplano and jungle to try and find work in Arequipa though end up in the pueblos jovenes on the outskirts of the city in the desert where we work.

In the next few months we hope to build school vegetable gardens for the daily food programme and also implement various family sustainable income plans to help with household costs.

All the best for April and thank you in advance for your continued support.

Cheers