Juxtaposition

I walked into the Art station room before camp one morning and the juxtaposition was too much. I had to grab my camera and take a picture. One of our kindergarden students was looking at a book that a volunteer had brought for art activities. It was a book about ideas for kids' bedrooms. Many of our students sleep on the floor in a room shared by their entire family. 



The cost of creating each bedroom could perhaps sponsor all of our students for one school year. You may not have grown up in as immaculate of a bedroom as we see in those books, but you probably did have a bed and a school properly equipped with necessary materials? 5 of our 200 students have been sponsored so far for the 2016-2017 school year which starts on August 17th. 

At $100 a year to chip in, we know we can get all of our students sponsored this year! E-mail Sponsor@EsperanzaMeansHope.org if you are interested.
http://esperanzameanshope.org/student-sponsorship

Summer 2016 Update

There is so much to update about and we apologize for going so long without posting. The 2015-2016 school year finished well on June 17^th. Report cards were given to parents and students on June 24^th. Our sixth annual Change My Stars English Immersion Summer Camp began on June 27^th, with this being the fourth year it has been held in the school.

Old rough floor, new smooth floor.

 
The school year was different for us in the renovated space with a new director. We extended the school day from 8am to noon to 8am to 1pm. We served meals five days a week for the first time ever. The space, while functional, still needs work. The floor is not finished but is a rough concrete that creates lots of dust and is not able to be mopped. As soon as school ended, we began working on finishing the floor. 

A teacher volunteer named Kristine who visited and observed in May helped us to create more thorough behavior charts and teacher evaluations that can be conducted monthly. In April, we finished paying off the building and now are building owners. We were able to do this thanks to an amazing year of fundraising where we fundraised more than we ever have before, along with a $70,000 loan from a generous couple of supporters in the U.S. We are paying off the loan at a 3% interest rate over the course of nine years. 

We used the code of another school called Niños de Dios (Children of God) this year as we continue to work on meeting requirements to solicit our own code. We were able to register all pre-schoolers and first graders into the system. Any student who is above the first grade level but has no proof that they attended an accredited school previously is automatically sent to first grade in the system. This is a problem in this country often. The aid community likes to say that kids without birth certificates can’t go to school, but often the problem is that the student attended a school without a code or a school in Haiti but was not able to properly transfer the original documents to the Dominican Republic. Or the child entered school late and was not allowed into his or her grade level because of their age. 

We requested that the District office of the Ministry of Education send a technician to evaluate our students in 2^nd to 6^th grade and enter them into the system at the grade level that their academic level corresponds with, but we were told that it was too late into the school year. They would do the evaluation in August of the following school year. At the end of the school year, we had problems with our scholarship student in 8^th grade that almost caused him to not be allowed to take the national 8^th grade exam that allows him to go onto high school. We had to jump through hoops to resolve that. The District office again told us to come first thing in office to get those evaluations off the ground. So we hope and pray that all goes as planned and we are able to have all grade levels entered into the system next year. 

We are also undergoing some personnel changes. The Ministry of Education requires that accredited schools have 80% of their teachers licensed to teach with a college degree and the other 20% working on their final years to do so. We do not have that. Two teachers were recently let go. We have a group of resumes whose owners we will be calling to hold interviews to replace these teachers. The rest of the teachers who do not have teaching degrees and are not working toward them have been notified that if they do not enroll in the university seeking the proper degree (as we have some who are studying Accountability, Information Technology, and other fields), then the 2016-2017 school year will be their last year working with us. 

Now that we have paid off the building, we have control over the outdoor space as well, which has been rented to a group of mechanics for a few years now. The rental has transferred to us and we get the 20,000 pesos (around $450 US) they pay for rent each month, which helps out with the $750 US we pay toward the loan each month. This has also given us access to a small office space on the mechanics’ side, so we will move Project Esperanza’s office, which is in town, to this room, within the next two weeks. We are still in negotiation with the renters, but this change will slightly lower their rent as they will no longer have access to the office space as they currently do. 

One day we will turn the outdoor space into recess space, but we are happy to rent out the space for now, although it is tricky having no outdoor recess space, but holding recess inside. There are a few building improvements we would like to make ASAP. One we have already started taking action on: the floor. The rough

cement creates lots of dust and is unmoppable so we are putting on a smooth cement finish. We have a 600 gallon tinaco that stores water on the roof throughout the week. However, we often have problems with this system. City water is available through the pipes one or two days a week. It does not always have high enough pressure to force it to go up into the tinaco and fill it. Therefore, sometimes we have to buy truckloads of water to fill the tinaco and during the time it takes for the truck to come, we have to haul water by buckets for cooking and cleaning. You can imagine that the bathroom gets bad. 

The director suggested that we dig and construct a cistern, which would cost between 40 and 50,000 pesos, or right around $1,000 US. The cistern would be an extra water reserve which we could pump water into the tinaco from when it runs out. We looked into digging a well and found it to come out to the same price. So that is probably the smarter option and it is safer as well as we won’t have a large underground pool of water where the top could potentially be left open and a child who doesn’t know how to swim could fall in.

The wall divisions are definitely a step up from a large open

building without walls to divide classrooms, but we still have the

Drop celings would go on top of the cincerblock wall.

problem of noise carrying from one classroom to another. With improved behavior charts and system of dealing with behavior, this may change, but we still would like to, at some point, put in drop ceilings. Our inexpensive wall fans are not creating much ventilation and some have broken. We would like to invest in industrial fans at some point, or large ceiling fans. Someone also recently suggested that we use foam spray to spray the inside of the tin roof

Our current wall fans are not getting the job done.

so it does not create as much heat. 

One thing that I hope we can accomplish within the five or so weeks before school starts back up is to purchase sheets of clear roofing to put in the back part of the school where little air comes between the space between the roof and wall, as it does in the front, to create sun lights. Electricity is not consistent and when there are no lights, it is hard for the pre-schoolers back there

We hope to replace some pieces of tin with transparent pieces.

to learn! These sheets cost around 2,000 per sheet and we hope to buy six. 

One last update is that we plan to put in a seventh grade class next year. Up until now we have functioned up to sixth grade. After sixth grade, if the student has a sponsor, we send them to Colegio Mundo Feliz which is the closest private school where the students from Padre Granero can walk to. Seventh grade here costs 1,500 pesos a month. After that, they attend the same school, but in the afternoon, for 8^th grade. 8^th grade costs 500 pesos a month. For high school, there is another very good school nearby called ALIC. ALIC is expensive in the morning and has an all-day bilingual option, but also a more inexpensive high school option in the afternoon. This is also 500 pesos a month. Therefore, we have inexpensive options within walking distance for 8^th to 12^th grade. However, 7^th grade is more expensive. We have several 6^th graders who passed this year and are going onto 7^th grade. It will be less expensive to hire a 7^th grade teacher and add one more class and then send the students to 8^th grade elsewhere after finishing 7^th grade. 

This year we had over 160 students enrolled. Attendance averaged between 130 and 140 a day. However, we only had 74 students sponsored. We have kept student sponsorships at $100 a year, even though the cost for each student to attend school is much more than that. Imagine, these students are receiving a meal each day! We have kept the sponsorship at such a low amount in order to supplement other fundraising efforts, and make it possible for more people to sponsor. We think that it should be possible, therefore, for us to get all of our students sponsored each year. Yet for some reason, we have yet to do that. We believe that 2016-2017 is the year to make that happen!

Stats for the New School Year

The school year successfully started on September 9th! Pre-school through 3rd grade have class in the mornings and 4th, 5th and 6th grades have class in the afternoons. Several volunteers, teachers, and a director, worked on registering students for this year. Below are some stats taken from those registrations. 27 of our students are sponsored so far, which leaves around 73 left we need to get sponsored! We have a new fundraising software to facilitate support for the school. Click here to view the new page which displays our goals, progress, and deadlines.

Lastly, the pictures in this post were taken toward the beginning of the year by the landlord of the building we rent. He asked if he could take pictures to show to his family in Austria, as he is proud to be renting his building for the use of a school! You can see that most students were not in uniform at this time. Many students unfortunately wait to get their uniforms to come to school, although we encourage them to come in colors. This can be frustrating to observe for those of us who went to high quality schools without uniforms, but here it is completely the norm, and we just have to go with it. But this is another reason why it is important that we get our students sponsored!

One last thing to clarify before you read the stats is that where you see K for Kindergarten, it actually encompasses 3 years of schooling, following the Haitian school system, so this somewhat coincides to two years of pre-school and one year of kindergarten, with students entering as young as 2. You will also notice that we have students at low levels but older ages, who have never had the opportunity to go to school before. And we have two adult classes at the basic levels that we started holding at night this year, which are not included in these stats.

STATS FROM REGISTRATION

 

There are 100 total students listed on the spreadsheet. Some of the information is incomplete, so these averages are slightly inaccurate, but should give an overall picture of the school roster.

21 students report being at the school last year, plus 2 who started but didn’t end the year. One student reports having attended the P.E. school in Muñoz last year.

STUDENTS PER GRADE
91 students reported their current grade
Average grade of all students: 2.8

K: 25
1st: 11
2nd: 21
3rd: 15
4th: 9
5th: 7
6th: 3

AVERAGE AGE & RANGE

Average age of all students: 9.74 (age range 1.5-24)

Average age by grades:

K: 3.7 (age range 1.5-7)
1st: 11.8 (age range 5-21)
2nd: 11.5 (age range 5-20)
3rd: 10.6 (age range 6-15)
4th: 12.6 (age range 6-18)
5th: 15.8 (age range 11-24)
6th: 15 (age range 13-18)

NUMBER OF STUDENTS OF EACH AGE

(89 students reported their age)

1 – 1.5 years old
6 – 2 years old
6 -- 3 years old
7 – 4 years old
3 – 5 years old
7 -- 6 years old
7 – 7 years old
4 – 8 years old
3 – 9 years old
10 – 10 years old
5 -- 11 years old
3 -- 12 years old
5 -- 13 years old
4 – 14 years old
3 -- 15 years old
3 -- 16 years old
2 -- 17 years old
6 -- 18 years old
2 -- 19 years old
1 -- 20 years old
2 -- 22 years old
1 -- 24 years old

TIME IN DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

49 students reported how long they had been in the D.R.

18 were born in the D.R.

3 – less than one year
7 – one year
3 – two years
3 – three years
3 – five years
5 – six years
5 – seven years
1 – eight years
1 – 9 years

NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN HOUSEHOLD

69 families listed the size of their household.

Average household size: 4.3

7 households of 2
18 households of 3
15 households of 4
11 households of 5
9 households of 6
9 households of 7







Thank you for your support!

A New Building & New Directors for a New School Year!

We have been blessed with a new building! All summer we searched for a new school building as we knew that the one we were in last year was a little expensive for the amount of space it provided. It also was in an area of the community where the water pressure is so low that it doesn't even rise from ground level up into the taps. We found an apartment for a bit less rent money and a bit more space with better access to water, but the downside was that it had no yard area, whereas the one from last year had at least a little. Plus, it was not a house, but an apartment connected to other apartments and on the second floor. Nonetheless, we were going to go for it. 

As time neared to pay the deposit and move, Willy, our first grade teacher, told me of a great house he found in a neighboring community that is a little.. actually quite a bit wealthier, which means better access to water, electricity, cleanliness, and peace in general, not to down talk the barrio by any means. One day during summer camp we left the group to go check it out. While on the way, we passed a yard and building with a playground that used to be a restaurant. I had noticed it before. It had a large "For Rent" sign and a phone number. I pointed it out to Willy. We immediately stared at it and commented at how perfect it would be for the school. I quickly called the number and spoke to the landlord who told us the rent - about $40 more per month than our current building. 

The landlord's wife was next door and would come to open it. Once I got off the phone, we celebrated and expressed our disbelief that a building with a yard so big and beautiful with a playground could cost just $40 more than the building we were previously in. Willy, who had just been talking about the persecution he was facing and health problems he continued to experience, which he believed to be a result of his involvement with the school and effort to advance it despite of jealousy and competition among other community members, something that has unfortunately come up a bit among our teachers and I believe falls under the category of spiritual warfare, said, "I think.... I think it's God that is giving us this building." I (Caitlin) agreed. He didn't mean literally giving it to us to own, but led us to it to use for the school.

After checking out the building, we saw that it didn't have enough space inside to house all of the classrooms, but it had adequate porch space in the front, side, and back, and with the Caribbean climate, this is perfectly fine. I ran back to camp and after it ended and local campers were dismissed, led volunteers, teachers, and the campers who travel to camp with us to check it out. Everyone was pleased with it. The landlord said that someone else was looking at it and deciding about it. After missing out on great houses in such situations before, I shared this with the volunteers and let them know that the deposit money was not yet available from organization funds. Three volunteers generously fronted the money so that we could move in that weekend! So English camp had a new home for the last week! 

We quickly discovered that a big lesson kids would have to learn was playground etiquette. It was heart warming yet also heart breaking to watch teenagers pile up on see saws, swings, and a slide, as though they had never been on a playground in their lives, and maybe some of them had not been. So we did demonstrations of waiting in a line behind the slide, having just one camper on a swing at a time, and taking turns. The first day before we sat them down and talked about this, we were lucky that the most serious injury was a busted lip!

One last announcement is that we have a new morning director and new afternoon director. Wanbert, school co-founder and director since 2010 has stepped down as director and will be working as a teacher in the

morning and afternoon. Pastor Milien has proposed a man named Vladimi as morning director and one of our teachers Met Prosper will be serving as afternoon director. Spreading out the responsibility in this way will undoubtedly cause the staff to work more in a team fashion and will make the overall effort more productive. We had a meeting this morning that ended up lasting 3 hours! After spending the summer with volunteers, teachers have learned a lot about the life of a volunteer and therefore a little more about the base of the organization. We will be visited by a volunteer placement organization the week of August 19th in hopes of establishing a partnership where they send up to 200 volunteers a year throughout the year to work with us! We have high hopes for establishing this partnership as it will be a great opportunity to work with more folks, as well as with the trip fees volunteers will pay, it will be a steady source of income that will hopefully allow us to make some improvements such as an increase in teacher salaries. 
 
 Don't forget - we are starting a new school year and need sponsors for each of our students. We have had around 100 register so far and have 11 sponsored for this school year. School starts September 9th so we need more sponsors before then as it goes much better when we can get books and uniforms before the start of the school year, rather than throughout! It's $100 for the year. E-mail Sponsor@EsperanzaMeansHope.org for more info. 

Thank you for your support!

Lots of Meetings!!

Teacher Judith Cadet and her kindergarden/pre-school class.

Throughout the spring, we had a series of meetings with educators in the community of Padre Granero. Some of these educators work in our school, some work in another school that popped up nearby this year, others are parents of students in our school, and others are hopeful employees. Everyone expressed one desire. To work in collaboration toward the cause of providing the best education possible to the children in the community, as well as to illiterate adults. They also expressed the need for educators to stop putting money first when providing social aid, but to put the advancement of the school first. We hope that teacher salaries can increase in the future and their standards of living can improve, but putting money first will not make this happen.

There seems to be a phenomenon that often occurs when a local group of educators receives foreign support. Rather than using the support as a boost to do more than they could've done before, they sometimes put money first and hold back, refusing to do certain basic tasks unless more money is given to them. They aren't motivated to visit the houses of children who are not in school and encourage their parents (who are unschooled themselves and don't always give school the value it deserves) to send these children to school. They are more concerned about their monthly paycheck and don't seem concerned (or at least enough to act) that at the end of each year, attendance dwindles significantly, or some students who register and receive free uniforms don't actually attend school. This group whom which we held a series of meetings largely criticized this phenomenon and spoke passionately about their collective desire to create a school where this is not the case. Educators who act in that way are producing much less fruit than is possible to produce, and they/we want to produce as much fruit as possible.

So in response to this, we began forming a committee to govern the school. This committee is still in its formation stages. I am happy to announce that we have joined forces again with the first educator we ever worked with in Padre Granero, a pioneer of Haitian education in the community, Pastor Milien Dieufils. Also as a result of this series of meetings, the man who has served as the school's director from January 2010 to present, was asked to step down and work as a teacher. If he does not accept peacefully, he will not work with the school at all. It was determined that his practices do not represent the ideal practices stated above, but more so the negative practices that lead to a less fruitful school and effort.

Tomorrow we will begin a volunteer run English immersion camp in the school. This summer we will also execute a soccer team for boys in the community ages 7-14, which boys in our boys' home will also participate in. We are searching for a new school building to rent as the previous director declares too much authority over the current building, and also because we believe we can find a better location with better access to water. Volunteer Chloe Bootstaylor and teacher Willy Previl spent a week and a half walking all around the community and surrounding communities, motivating and informing parents and registering students for next year. Chloe has created student profiles of these students who are ready for sponsorship for the 2013-2014 school year. Remember, this is a $100 per year committment which goes toward the student's uniform, books, and some toward the general functioning of the school. If you would like to sponsor, please e-mail Sponsor@EsperanzaMeansHope.org

Lastly, if you are in the Puerto Plata area and would like to volunteer with the English camp this summer, please e-mail cambia.mis.estrellas@gmail.com.