By Dom Williams | Founder and Director
I hope all is well with you. The Covid-19 pandemic continues to cause major problems in Latin America though the rollout of national vaccination programmes are giving some hope for the future “new normal”, albeit slowly. Our local teachers, who have all now been vaccinated, have continued to maintain the education of our students by travelling to the communities to hand out homework and answer any questions. Online teaching is not an option due to lack of internet and devices. Some staggered classroom teaching, with all the protocols in place, has been possible in some countries though normal classroom-based teaching for all is still months away.
This week’s Little By Little bonus donation campaign gives us a brilliant opportunity to build a foundation to work from as we look ahead to the final months of 2021 and into 2022. GlobalGiving will match each donation up to $50 by 50% from Monday 13th to Friday 17th September. It would be fantastic once again to rely on your support this week with whatever you are able to donate to this page.
Thanks to your donations during this time we have been able to keep everything going on a shoestring budget, including buying all the necessary biosecure products to maintain safety, though there has been so much we have wanted to do which has had to be put on hold. Restrictions due to Covid-19 have forced the cancellation of usual fundraising events including our charity challenges over the past nineteen months and the economic outlook remains uncertain.
Whilst the main priority is obviously keeping our current local teachers and the education of the children, once more funding becomes available we want to increase the number of local teachers, undertake maintenance, restock the classrooms and invest in more family sustainable income plans for the future which is even more critical during these times. The sustainable plans will provide extra income for the families to buy essential food and medicines as well as helping to fund the schools in the future.
We will also be planting a tree for every $10 raised during this week to help reduce the carbon footprint of the day-to-day activities of the projects. These include boat travel for the students in Guatemala, pickup transport for the students in Honduras and teachers’ transport up into the mountains in Ecuador and desert in Perú.
Classes continue to be held on a staggered basis in Honduras with different grades each day with the students continuing to walk up to two hours from their communities to come to school, albeit once a week for now. We continue to transport those who live furthest away by pickup in the evenings.
The centralized Plan Huerto vegetable garden has been successful as part of the college course in agricultural techniques. They are now learning about and planting sweet-corn which yields in three months and can be sold to restaurants in urban areas and export. Having a large centralized Plan Huerto also will provide income to cover some school costs over time and the students can learn how to manage their own plan huertos in the future to help with extra income within the families for medicines and extra supplies.
We will use all funds raised this week during the Little By Little Campaign to go towards our secondary school and college local teachers, daily transport by pickup for the students who live furthest away, biosecure products for the classrooms and further investment in our sustainable plans.
Many thanks for anything you can donate this week to the Little By Little Campaign. It is such a fantastic opportunity for us to be able to get back on track after these past eighteen months and build a solid platform for the years ahead.
Also, if you are thinking of doing something different in 2022 please do follow the link in this report to our Charity Challenges in Perú and Ecuador in May and June taking in the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu in Perú and volcanos in Ecuador – you can do either or both!
Have a great month and thank you all once again.
Cheers
Links:
By Dom Williams | Founder and Director
By Dom Williams | Founder and Director
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
