The La Esmeralda School Project is an effort that is currently being managed by Lotte and Pauline, two Dutch girls (the ones who *ahem* drafted me into helping them teach english) who are currently traveling through Guatemala, and volunteering their time to help out the local school here in Rio Dulce. This is a primary school that handles 300+ students in grades 1-6, with EXTREMELY limited resources. They have only 3 teachers for the whole school. Most kids go without books or any learning materials, not even paper or pens. The families whose kids attend this school are extremely poor, and are unable to even give them the bare essentials to attend school.
Even worse, once kids get past the 6th grade, they were essentially not able to continue their education to secondary school. This is because, get this, the school or village does not have the money to operate a school boat to transport the kids just a mile or so up the river so they can get to the other school! They have the boat, but no money for fuel, a driver, or anything else.
Since Lotte and Pauline jumped all over this not even 2 months ago, they have established the following urgent needs and have found solutions in the following ways:
1. They now have a “school boat” that transports the secondary school (grades 7-9) age students to a nearby secondary school in Frontreras. With just a few donations, they were able to get a budget together to operate the boat, pay a driver and cover all fuel and maintenance costs, with the participation of the families for a small fee per student to help offset costs.
2. They have completely redesigned and reorganized the school’s library that had not been in use for more than a year, and was in utter shambles. With just a little money, a little hard work and some donated services, they have been able to install new shelving, reorganize the entire library, and make it operational again. The next step is to try to get a full-time librarian to manage it.
3. They are working on a budget allowance to get at least one more full-time teacher on the school’s staff. The Guatemalan government can only budget for 3 teachers, and the school is busting at the seams. With at least one more teacher, the school can have all four classrooms fully manned by a teacher, and a somewhat more coherent curriculum can be handled. There are trained teachers here in the village that are available to teach, but there is simply no money to pay them.
They have also been able to generate enough donations to ensure that each student has at least one notebook and writing tool.
So, just what is all this costing the project?? Well, lucky that all this is happening in Guatemala, where costs are pretty low. The budget that the project is trying to get together is as follows:
The project’s share of the “school boat” budget is $1100 Quetzales a month. That comes to about $137 US per month, less than $10US per month per student who is using the boat for transportation. If you donate ten bucks, you’ve just paid for one student’s transportation to higher education for a month.
The project’s share of the librarian staffing budget is $500 Quetzales a month. That comes to about $62 US per month for a FULL TIME LIBRARIAN! If you donated $100 US, you’d have paid for a month and a half of librarian’s salary, and you will have helped maintain a full-time job for the librarian!
The project’s share of the additional teacher staffing budget is $1000 Quetzales a month. That comes to about $120 US a month for a FULL TIME TEACHER.
So, we’ve made it very easy for people to donate to the project via Paypal. Understand that EVERY PENNY you donate will go right to the school project. These girls are not making a dime off this program, nor is anyone else other than the people who get hired to do the jobs needed. This area is sorely in need of a good educational program and if the project helps these 300+ students who are currently attending each year, the benefits will ripple throughout the area.
If you want to check out photos of the project (the site is in dutch, so you won’t understand a thing unless you speak dutch, and I know some of you out there do.) Go to:
http://www.geocities.com/lottepaulineinguatemala/hola
If you have any questions, please email Lotte at:
You can even specify which program of the project you would like your money to go to. Understand that all three are equally important, and by just taking care of these three basic needs, the school will be able to function at least somewhat effectively.
So what do you do now? Give them some money, that’s what!
Click on the link below to go to the Paypal button below to donate. It can be any amount you want, $5, $10, $50 whatever. This kind of money goes a HUGE way here in Guatemala, so give whatever you can spare. Every little bit will help, I promise you that.
Just go to: http://theandiamo.com/laesmeralda.html , click and donate. 300+ Guatemalan kids will love you for it. Oh yeah, and email all your friends, link them to this page and ask them to help too, ok??