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