Worth Being Involved!

Secondary scholarships

Meet Manuel. This July he graduated from sixth grade at Escuela San Felipe de Jesus in the Los Arcos area of San Felipe. For many of his classmates, this will be the only graduation they attend as participants. The principal of this school estimates that 70 percent of his class will not finish high school and that none will go to college.

Why? A variety of social and economic factors are at work. Parents may be unable to afford to send a child to school. Instead, the child may be needed to work in order to supplement the family's income. In secondary school, tuition must be paid, and school and P. E. uniforms are mandatory. Of course, the cost for school supplies and activities is also higher as one progresses in school. In addition, there may be a lack of aspiration and a general feeling of futility.

Fortunately, a teacher in Sacramento, California, heard of the situation and opened her heart and pocket book and contributed $60.00 for a scholarship to the first year of junior high school. No one, she felt, should be denied an education for the lack of $60.00. She also provided extra money for clothing and any additional supplies he might need.

On the poster behind Manuel are birds in flight bearing the names of the students in his class, each of whom deserves the chance to make life better through education. If you would like to help a young man or woman fly to new heights, simply click contact us for more information about changing a child's future.

"A school is a building with four walls, and tomorrow inside." - Anonymous

Hands Up

The main focus of the club's fund-raising activities is education. However, we realize that a hungry child is not going to learn. Therefore, a few of our members go out each month with food for individuals and families who are in desperate need. This includes the sick and elderly as well as families with young children. Las Amigas contributes to this fund, and at each meeting a raffle is held to raise additional money. Donations to help purchase fresh fruits and vegetables are always needed.

This project is not an easy one. The conditions in some homes are truly heart-breaking. However, the members who initiated this project and who have worked with it for several years, feel that it is vitally necessary to the welfare of the people they help. They all say that the joy and satisfaction they have received from their efforts have been all the reward they want or need.

At Christmas time, many Amigas members join with others in the community to provide a Christmas Eve dinner and gifts to families who would otherwise have little or no Christmas. Everyone who as participated in this has spoken of the joy and gratitude of the families involved and how it made their own Christmas especially meaningful. Many have become personal friends with the family they met that evening.

You can help by bringing down bags of rice, beans, and other dry or canned goods. Clothing, especially for infants and children, diapers (infant and adult sizes), shampoo (regular and for head lice), soap and toiletries are other useful items. To find out where to take these items, please contact us.

Book Buddies

In English or Spanish, everyone loves Clifford, the big red dog. Until four years ago when the Book Buddies program was initiated, the schools of San Felipe had few, if any library books. No story books, like Clifford, for circle time; no resource books to delve into for topics of interest. Four years later, more than 12,000 books in Spanish have been distributed to San Felipe's 11 elementary schools and 8 kindergartens. Although the library collections are not adequate by U.S. and Canadian standards, these books are a welcome start and greatly appreciated by students and teachers.

The schools are working hard now to find a way to display the books so that the children can have better access to them. Several schools have renovated old storage rooms, and others are trying to build libraries. Block by block, these structures are growing, to the pride of the children, teachers, and community. Progress builds morale and enhances the educational experience for both the children and their teachers.

To learn more about Book Buddies, please click on the web site at: http://www.inet-toolbox.com/bookbuddies/. The bookbuddies web site was built and is being maintained free of charge by Cynthia Beuselinck of Alberta, Canada. Many thanks to her for this generous contribution to the children of San Felipe.

Information about library projects can be found under special projects.Another way to help Any book purchase made from amazon.com benefits the Book Buddy program IF you first go into the Book Buddy web site and use the link provided there to go into amazon. In addition to your own purchases, if you wish to purchase a book for the schools, a "wish list" is available.

"What we learn with pleasure we never forget." - Alfred Mercier

Adopt-A-School

After viewing a video about Book Buddies, the Women of Unity of Vista, CA, decided not only to help with that project, but to join Las Amigas and initiate a suggestion from the video to "adopt-a-school." Of course, no one knew what that meant, but we were about to learn. The school chosen for this project was Escuela San Felipe de Jesus, the afternoon school at the Los Arcos Colonia. It, and the morning school which shares the same facilities, Cinco de Febrero, are in an extremely impoverished area of San Felipe. Consequently, it is difficult for the principals and teachers to obtain help from the local community. Students from this area tend to leave school sometime after sixth grade and the majority do not graduate from high school. For most, college is not even a dream.

The Women of Unity immediately began collecting used office and school materials and help a fund-raiser to purchase paint, lumber, and all the other materials that renovating a school requires. They were helped locally in this endeavor by Tony Reyes, who offered a six-day fishing trip to the Midriff Islands aboard his flagship, the José Andres, as a raffle prize. Bill Gabbard held a monthly breakfast buffet at Club de Pesca and donated all the profits to the project. Volunteers provided the labor.

Thus far, the project has painted the walls and ceiling of the classrooms, built storage cabinets for the teachers, put up curtain rods and curtains, repaired desks and lighting, installed bulletin boards, and purchased educational materials and equipment.

This school year, two of our goals are to paint the exterior of the building and build storage units for the children. Since the buildings are used by two entirely separate schools, the children have to take everything they use home with them each day.

Our major project is to build a small library so that the children will have access to the books provided by Book Buddies. These books are now in storage because there is no place for them.

Help is needed. Contact Us if you or an organization to which you belong would like to help with this project.

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - William Butler Yeats