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The New Potable Water Project
It has taken many years for this dream to come true, but now quite yet. The first installation of the piping from the municipal supply at the bottom of the horse trail to the first two houses did not work as well as planned. This is now being revised and when it is working hopefully we can expand it to the Community Chapel and a dream of a Community Garden. There are 7 families that were discovered not sufficiently fed. We are now in our second year of support of this program by supplying them some funds to buy necessities and more importantly the experienced farmers of the community helping them start and maintain “kitchen gardens’ and the planting of fruit trees. It was quickly realized that the dependence on rain was problematic, thus the Water Project.
Scholarship
A few years ago, Jose Luis sent us a proposal for the rural children to go to high school in the small town near by. To attend high school, there is tuition to pay and books to buy. Jose Luis’s program of Beca (scholarship) was an inventive one. Each of initial students would get two years of schooling and money to buy a pig (we referred to this as the “pig project”). The pig was an investment to the farm family, growing fat and having piglets, it is a constant source of income. Since the inception we have funded the project each year and I am happy to report 12 students have graduated and there are 9 enrolled in the current year. To get to school, there is a 45 minute walk down the horse trail, a ride by transport to the town. They attend school for 2 or 3 days and return to the rural area to help with the farm for sometimes as long as 14 days. All their homework goes with them. For their stay in town, we cover the rent of a house where the children can stay safely.
This one room schoolhouse, with one teacher and grades 1st through 6th, was one of our first endeavors with this community. This was a single large classroom with chairs, nothing on the walls, no books, nor did the teacher have any teaching materials, just his imagination. With the help of Demetrio, the teacher, this school house is a remarkable place where children love to be. There is now a library, teaching aids, maps, a globe, charts and last year we provided a large “white board’ and a clock and flag. Here are two students in Nicaraguan “folkloric” costumes dancing to the battery operated CD player. Each year Demetrio sends us a list of currently needed items that we purchase in Managua prior to going to the rural area of El Sabalo.
Clothes
Every year we create the “Great ClothesGive Away” – if you could only be there to see all the families holding up articles for a fitting, Mothers outfitting their babies, toddlers, school children. The teens finding some nearly new T-shirt or the fathers and mothers finding new clothes to go to Church on Sunday. This is the only time they get new clothes. We are the “Target” of their lives.
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