Changing a Life

In addition to organizing volunteers to work in schools around Granada throughout the school year and the summer school programs La Esperanza also organizes sponsorships for excelled primary school kids to continue on to high school. The sponsorships pay for the kids‘ uniforms, books and school. From what we have heard most of the high schools in Nicaragua are not free public schools, unlike most of the primary schools. It depends on the communities’ wealth and resources. Families have to pay up to $25 a month for high school; which doesn’t seem like a lot to us but for families who only make a few dollars a day it is. So La Esperanza has monitored some of the poorer schools and communities in Granada looking for excelled students. This means kids with good grades, good attendance and a desire to continue their education. La Esperanza picks one, two or three schools each year to select these excelled kids for the sponsorships called, Becas.

So on Monday morning we went to the La Esperanza office to choose one of the many kids on the waiting list for a Beca. First we looked at a list of the kids grades including math, language, social studies, geography, etc. up to seven subjects. Then choose the top two kids to read their short profiles. We decided on a girl named Tatiana. She is 12 years old, lives with her grandmother, father and younger two brothers. In her profile she said she likes to help her two brothers with their school work and wants to be a teacher when she grows up.

While we have been working in the summer school program at San Ignacio for the past few weeks La Esperanza also organized some volunteers to work in a high school preparation program for these sponsors kids. Tatiana started the high school prep classes today. And after our work at San Ignacio we went to the prep school to meet Tatiana. She is a really sweet girl with a bubbly personality. Although our meeting was kinda short since we have a language barrier. But we told her we would come back to check up on her before we leave Nicaragua and are expecting update letters from her over the next few years telling us about her high school experiences.

It was really satisfying for Ryan and I to meet her face-to-face so she knows the sponsorship money doesn’t come from “thin-air” and that there are really people behind it supporting her, hoping for her best.

Me, Tatiana, Ryan....the girl we sponsored for High School

written by  ryan & debbrial on December 16, 2009 from Granada, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Us Discovering the Latin Americas
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