Fund a teacher and teach a class in Latin America

I hope all is well with you.

Our school in Guatemala nears the mid-way point in the educational year with some excellent exam results. As the school becomes more and more sustainable we are looking to expand our work in different areas in Guatemala, including Lake Atitlán and the Dry Corridor where there is an extreme dearth of educational opportunities. We always aim to use every cent of donation money as best we can and we feel that investing in local teachers can provide the best “bang for our buck”. Over the years we have seen the huge benefits of taking on local teachers as they are from the same environments as the children so understand the difficulties though also are actual living proof that it is possible no matter your background – they are fantastic role models.

The past months in our college in Honduras have been extremely successful and not just in the classroom. Recently our students were involved in reforesting 1000’s of trees in the area. They also continued giving talks in the local primary schools about health, nutrition and climate change. This is part of their course and not only imparts useful information it helps them get used to speaking in public.

Our new satellite secondary school in Barbasco is a huge success – it is in an extremely rural area, increasing our catchment area for children who otherwise couldn’t access further education. Our support for the local primary school in La Pintada is still in its infancy and an area we want to increase over the coming years.

In Ecuador it wasn’t just teaching that was the highlight of the past 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.  

Mother’s Day and the school’s Anniversary was celebrated in Perú and our fruit program continues in the school with bananas, melons, apples and more! We have seen such a change with the children with this program as they don’t eat much out of school. The government provides some limited food though no way to cook it, so we provide the gas for the cooker!

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

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.

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.

In Guatemala, our school got off to a great start in Itzapa 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.

As Guatemala was our first country we are well into the second phase of the cycle with the community taking more control and decision making of the day-to-day running of the school which is essential for future sustainability.

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.

We are well into the second phase in Honduras with many sustainable plans, like vegetable gardens and coffee, helping to cover some of the costs of the projects. There is still a long way to go though we are optimistic in implementing chicken plans in several communities during 2019, spreading the benefits around and most importantly for the students themselves.

The second half of the school year got underway in January with our three local Phoenix teachers doing a sterling job in Ecuador. We are succeeding in 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.

Like our other countries, we are into the second phase of our work in Ecuador with sustainable plans, like Plan Moo (cows) and Plan Cuy (guinea pigs) already helping to cover the majority of the secondary school, college and university costs. Donations still cover our primary school costs and we will be working on implementing more sustainable plans during 2019.

In the first week of June we will be undertaking our charity challenge, climbing volcanoes to raise money for the projects. To donate to the challenge in support, please donate to this page and thank you!

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.

We are still in the first phase in Perú though will be implementing sustainable plans for the first time during 2019 so fingers crossed with their success. In the last week of May we will be undertaking the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu charity challenge so please donate to this page.

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