Fund a teacher and teach a class in Latin America

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

In Guatemala many of our scholarship students were involved in a team-building day climbing Tolimán Volcano. These events not only allow them to see parts of the country they otherwise wouldn’t have though it also shows them what they can achieve personally and as part of a group. When not climbing volcanos they have been busy in the classroom!

As the school year finishes its first few months we continue to identify which children are at most risk of dropping out due to lack of school materials. The supplies from the government handed out at the start of the year begin to run out now, or have been lost, so it is critical to give the children the tools to continue.

Each year we plant hundreds of trees in Guatemala to offset our carbon footprint from The Phoenix Projects. This includes international flights for the charity challenges and the Impington School trip to Perú as well as daily transport taken by the local teachers.

Our scholarship students, their parents and other members of the community are all involved to ensure that the trees are cared for during the first stages of growth. From the young to the old, members of the community turned up to get involved. The elderly remember when the mountains were covered in trees and have seen first hand the extent of the deforestation in Guatemala. They are only too keen to reestablish the environment for future generations.

Our six local teachers continue giving classes in the school in Ecuador. Four of the teachers are part of our University programme where we help them with the cost of their studies in exchange for them teaching in the school. With this hands-on experience they should be able to find employment with the State once they graduate.

Mother's Day was celebrated in the school in May 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.

Plan Moo is coming along well with purchasing of cows restarted. The current herd is growing with several previous cows into their second calving. The sales of milk are shared between the local family and helping to cover teachers’ costs. 

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 

Mother’s Day was also celebrated this month in Peru 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.

Since we started the projects in 2006 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.

We have installed water filters in the school so the children have access to drinking water all the time. The water in the community, which is only available for a couple of hours in the early morning each day when we fill the storage tanks, isn’t drinkable.

Each year we provide every student with their own workbooks for language comprehension and grammar (Spanish) and maths so they can follow lessons and work individually when the teacher takes another class. We only have one teacher per two grades and the academic levels of the children vary greatly as more students join the school with limited prior teaching. By having their own workbooks they can get on with set work at their own pace when the teacher is not available.

We continue to welcome the next generation of children into the school. Silvia was one of our first students graduating 6th grade in 2007. Her brother Sadán, shown here, graduated in 2016 and is about to finish secondary school.

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