Our Focus Right Now

A Very Belated, and Very Important Update!

3rd grade

This blog has been neglected. Busy, busy, busy. So much has gone on with the school since the last post. Summer camp was the best ever, and this school year has been the best ever as well.October attendance shows 152 students in regular attendance at the school!! The bad news is, only 39 of them

Kindergarten teacher at recess

are sponsored!! More good news is some partnerships we have been forming. Center for Research and Education in New York City did a teacher training in August, a restaurant in the area donates rice for school meals, Faith, Hope, and Joy Foundation and Love United complete the rest, pay the

Morning director with students

cook, and provide oversight. Praise God! 

So the biggest news is explained in the Facebook post below:

Camp zoo trip, July 2014

WARNING: A challenge and rant. Alright, I hope to convey to the many of you who have worked with the school in Padre Granero in some respect and who love the kids and teachers there, the urgency that I feel. On Jan. 24th 2015, we have to move out of the current space that has the playground pictured in this group's photo.

"My School" drawing contest

n the area and this is the one! This is why I set up the Recycle for Padre Granero group and kids have been chipping in fundraising through recycling, and now through a "My School" t-shirt design contest which will be on t-shirts sent to anyone who donates $100+ for the new building. Anyway, I

"Little store" rewards

think we have to have the serious, collective, committed goal of purchasing this place by the time camp 2015 starts...which is the last week in June. I know we can do it!! I want to do some monthly fundraiser challenges that people can do in their respective cities. I know we

School meals

are all scattered all over the place which makes things harder, but I urge you to please be bold and confident! We can do it and the cause is oh so worthy! When we first came here in 2006 and conducted a street census, we easily created 140 profiles for kids working on the streets, the majority of whom were Haitians living in Padre Granero, NONE of whom (among the Haitians) were in school. And there were plenty of kids we

Jodi from Love United

did not get profiles on as well. I am happy to say that the situation is not the same today!! We should do a follow up census. That will be a goal for 2015. But the fact is that we have worked to combat the situation where these kids had very little to no access to school and have come a long way! We

Recycling project

have to finish what we started. We need our own building, and we need to get accredited... which having our own building is one of the main requirements for that. We need to turn this school into something that will last. Having the building will make that much more of a reality. So I posted the

Supesta soccer team

brochure about the vacation raffle. Never has a post reached so many people as that post did on the FB page. So the interest is high! We just have to get out and sell! Can we get some friendly competition going over who can sell the most tickets? Also, back in the day, we used to sell mistletoe on

Teacher training

VT campus around Christmastime. I had to call around to several places to find someone who had it, but he sold a few branches and we cut it up into bundles tied with ribbon, which if I remember correctly, we sold for $5 each. So this is my late Nov./Dec. fundraising challenge for the purpose of fundraising for the

EM, Cherline, and campers

new school building: Sell vacation raffle tickets (drawing Dec. 18th) and sell bundles of mistletoe! At school, at church, at work, at a stand in a public place like the mall..be creative! And again, be bold and confident! This is a worthy cause! And it deserves to be known! Billions and billions of dollars are raised for medical research through which a cure might be possible and made

Camp game

accessible to a small percentage of the world's population. I am thankful for that too and am not saying those funds should not be raised. But I am just saying that the turnover is a lot more distant there than funds going directly to affecting a child's life HERE and

Faith, Hope, & Joy clinic

NOW. Many are concerned about global warming and overpopulation and other issues but the biggest problem I have seen in front of me for the past 8 years for the country of Haiti and the places like Puerto Plata where Haitian people seek refuge and the burden/responsibility that that places on this city is... the need for loving

Joanne ran a great camp!

and nurturing human development. I spent a large chunk of today crying after watching a video of a woman here beating a child. Maybe torturing is a better word. It was on the news here and I am sorry I ever saw it. We know cases like that happen in the US too but the truth is that Haitians in general have a lot of abuse instilled in them...it's a vicious cycle that can make things really hard and dysfunctional. How does that ever change?

TLC. TLC. TLC. Consistency. Proper examples. I want for them the love and nurturing environment that I grew up with..that we all did who grew up in the US and Canada. With our large classrooms, teachers who use proper punishments, creative games that make learning fun, science experiments, awesome libraries, and all of that! God bless it I want it for them too. Please don't drop out of the group, I'm not angry, just sharing with you the pressures that are on me here and the urgency that I feel. Go team go!

Highlights from this Trimester

This past week was Holy Week and there was no school. Right before Holy Week marks the end of the 2nd trimester of the school year. Here are some pictures and highlights from this trimester:

Solar Energy Lessons & Shoe Box Solar Ovens!

Community BINGO

Delta Sigma Theta got passports for 4 of our students, 3 parents, and 1 teacher

Students filled out "About Me" pages to share with sponsors. 

Students got to try peanut butter and banana sandwiches

One generous donor provided groceries for a single mother of our students who just had surgery

Our adult night classes are full of students! 

Wanbert and Caitlin participated in Creole reading hour at a new library in Nuevo Renacer

SuperStar soccer team played a few games and even had a fan club of volunteers at one!

Now we're into the last semester and the last month of study time for our sixth grade students going to the national exam in Haiti in about a month. We're all also looking forward to summer English camp! 

Thanks for reading!

Recognition of Empowerment

Teachers were paid on time today again. This year we have a perfect record so far for the first time since 2008! (Last year was close to a perfect record, but we were late some months.) Paying teachers on time makes such a difference. They feel more secure, understandably and have a much more positive presence at school as a result. However, I think that God may have had a purpose in these years of backed up teacher pay. 

Today I met with Vladimir, the new morning director in Padre Granero, and Wanbert, the prior director and co-founder, who is still a teacher. They recently formed a committee among the older students in the school and have been teaching them about taking responsibility over some things in the school and learning to manage things as well. They led them each to make a small contribution of money, with one of them being the treasurer and money handler. They then used this money to purchase jugs of water so that water is always available for drinking in the school. This is an expense that the organization has not covered, but they found it to be a need that the school had. We also have some donated fortified rice and recently purchased a stove, pot, plates, and utensils. We have some oil as well. We mainly lack the ingredients to make a sauce to serve with the rice. 

This month our students learned about solar energy and constructed show boe solar ovens, along with one out of plywood!

Wanbert suggested that we ask for the participation of each student to complete the ingredients and get started serving school meals. Vladimir thought that that may not go over well, and we should leave the contributions to just the water. I think we agreed to follow Vladimir's ideas in the end, but Wanbert's reasoning for wanting to solicit the participation of students was gratifying. 

He said that he didn't used to think the way that he does now. But he realizes that when he accomplishes something for himself and provides something for himself, it is better than if he relies on others to give to him, or expects others to give to him. When everything is given to you, it actually weakens you rather than strengthens you. He said that Project Esperanza hasn't been able to provide him with everything, but he has received much formation and personal and professional development through working with the organization, and that is what he wants to pass along to the kids. 

I was astounded. Real, true collaboration and trust between those we are helping and those who are giving has taken years.. but I saw some light bulbs light up today. It's great to know that school leadership is finally teaching the kids to truly respect those sacrificing to make the school run, and encouraging them to "pay it forward". 

We have many students who still are not sponsored and more kids continue to register this far along in the school year. If you haven't already, please consider sponsoring one of our students for $100 a year. E-mail Sponsor@EsperanzaMeansHope.org for more information.  

More Students!

The first trimester ended on December 18, 2013. Over Christmas break we had a parent teacher meeting to give out report cards, a youth/teenager meeting where a psychologist talked about important choices they face, and a visit from our friend Martine, who brought gifts! Although the soccer team was on hold, about 10 boys still came to the school each Saturday and eagerly waited for the bus. 

Report card meeting.

At the youth/teenager meeting, one of our current students pulled a girl over to me by the arm. She said that this girl wanted to go to school here. We talked and it ended up that she had never gone to school before, but at age 16, was hoping to enroll. I told her to come on January 7, when school would start back up, and the director would gladly enroll her. She did show up and enroll and has been attending regularly. However, she does not yet have a uniform but comes in regular clothes. 

Just this morning I spoke on the phone to Vladimir, the morning director, and he asked for me to excuse him, as he knows that funds are tight, but new kids have been registering daily at school since it reopened and we don't have enough benches to seat them all. The plastic chairs we purchase for the pre-school and kindergarten children are not very durable. About half of them have broken. We need to invest in wooden chairs with metal legs, but that is another matter of funding. At the beginning of the school year, 100 students had registered. It is true that all do not attend regularly, and I have not gotten an exact count of how many more have registered, but the number is somewhere now around 120. The first grade classroom has moved from a small room to under a tree in the yard, as there was no longer enough space in the room. Only 36 of these students are sponsored so far for this year. We hope that supporters will help us in recruiting more sponsors, as there are so many students seeking an education and we would hate for them to be discouraged in that effort because they have nowhere to sit!

Parents receiving Christmas gifts to give their kids.

You may have heard of a law that was passed this year that removed citizenship from people of Haitian decent. This has caused quite a bit of negative backlash from the international community. Most of our students have immigrated here illegally from Haiti. Some were born here and have never known Haiti. We have held two meetings with a group called MUDHA which advocates for documentation rights and aids people in getting their birth certificates and passports at times. Several parents have attended in hopes of receiving aid, but no one has received anything tangible yet. However, I was recently contacted by someone with the Delta Theta Sigma Sorority near Chicago. They are visiting in early February and contacted us in hopes to learn more about our organization and especially about the struggle of the Haitian immigrant population and the issue of documentation. 

After dialoguing, it turns out that they will be visiting the school on their trip and we will hold a meeting with a representative of the Haitian consulate and MUDHA, as well as some select students and parents. They will have a chance to ask questions, get some answers, and will providing, I believe 8 students and parents with passports! We plan on sending 5 6th grade students to the national exam in Haiti this June. Some students have received extra support for their sponsors to help out with this, but others have not, so it is wonderful that this group is stepping in to help, and also to aid some parents who have been attending the meetings. 

Other than that, this first semester held a lot of drama among teachers which led us to further investigate the law in running such an institution and create an ideal game plan for the future to assure that the Dominican government is supportive of the institution. We have always tried to do this, but it has not always been within our financial capacity to do everything as required by law, and quite honestly, it is not always straight forward in figuring out what the true law is! However, this has been a time of education and enlightenment for sure!

Thank you for reading, and stay tuned!