Tag Archives: education

Shelley Callahan | April 15, 2016En Español

As we continue our tour of La Paz, we met Efrain, an energetic fourth-grader who lives near the Pedro Poveda School. Like any child, Efrain is proud of what he owns and likes to show his belongings to visitors. He shares an infectious smile with us as he holds up a prized pair of shoes Josefina has brought him. He’s equally excited to show us the kittens he’s raising. They sleep in their own little bed beside the bed he shares with his brother in a bedroom where the whole family sleeps.

Efrain with his new shoes

Getting support at Pedro Poveda

His mom works long hours as a cleaner, so this excellent student spends afternoons at the community center, where he breezes through most of his homework. When he has trouble, local college students help him master challenging material in their roles as volunteer tutors.

Efrain lives with his mom and three siblings in a small, single-bedroom home owned by his grandmother. She used to rent it to lodgers, but she let her daughter and grandchildren move in to save money as they struggled with hardships and poverty after the children’s father abandoned them.

Efrain faces many challenges, but he has resources, particularly the tireless support of Josefina, our Children Incorporated Coordinator in La Paz. She was the principal of the Pedro Poveda School he attends, but she retired five years ago at age 70 to run the community center. The center was once a simple library, but she had a vision for it to be so much more. She transformed it into a comprehensive facility for her students, where they could have a stable refuge from sometimes difficult home lives and learn modern skills to get ahead.

A vision for the children

Efrain faces many challenges, but he has resources, particularly the tireless support of Josefina, our Children Incorporated Coordinator in La Paz.

I’m fascinated by Josefina and ask her many questions after we leave Efrain for the next visit, but she doesn’t talk about herself much. She prefers to talk about her vision for the children, focusing on their needs and ways to ameliorate the hardships in their lives. We know she has lived in La Paz for most of her life. While she isn’t a nun nor does she use the title “Sister”, she does belong to a religious order, and her faith has led her to devote her life to helping children. She lives simply, sharing communal space with other women from the order, all of whom come to La Paz just to work with her at the community center.

Meeting Carla

Our next visit is with Carla, who was enrolled in the Children Incorporated program while she was a student at Pedro Poveda. Carla works as a teacher and has been pursuing further education to become a linguist. She is happily married to her husband, a mechanic named Juan Carlos, and the couple has a three-year-old daughter.

Life hasn’t always been good. Carla was abandoned by her parents at age 8. They left her with her grandmother, a vendor in the local market with few resources to take care of her properly. Thankfully, she was a student at Pedro Poveda and was quickly enrolled in child sponsorship. Carla still writes letters to her sponsor, practicing her English and expressing gratitude for the role they played in helping her thrive.

Josefina, always the gracious host, and so proud to show the work being done through the program she leads, hasn’t taken us on a typical site visit. Carla isn’t in the program anymore, and her daughter is too young to be sponsored. Josefina has brought us here so we can see how a woman who was once sponsored has done since leaving the program.

Even more importantly, she wants to show us her vision for Efrain’s future. From a broken home to a stable home; from surviving to thriving. This is who Josefina is and this is what she brings to the children and the families touched by her program. She’s a woman who can look at a child and see their future, and then devote her whole life to helping them get there.

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HOW DO I SPONSOR A CHILD IN BOLIVIA?

You can sponsor a child in Bolivia in one of three ways – call our office and speak with one of our sponsorship specialists at 1-800-538-5381, email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org, or go online to our donation portal, create an account, and search for a child in Bolivia that is available for sponsorship.

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Shelley Callahan | April 8, 2016En Español

Our Director of International Programs, Luis Bourdet, and I flew into La Paz just before sunrise, after an overnight trip from Richmond. I was woozy from fatigue or the elevation — 13,000 feet above sea level — and grateful when a young woman woke up at 4 am to check us into our hotel.

A City in the Mountains

I woke up as the sun rose, and got my first view of an amazing vertical city. I’ve never seen anywhere else like it; skyscrapers and colonial architecture sit unevenly, side-by-side, built on the hills that once made this city so difficult to navigate. Bridges, new since Luis’ last trip here, have made connections that never existed over ravines and valleys, letting even the poorest residents make trips that were once impossible.

Not every place is accessible by bridge though, and automobile traffic is congested and slow. Many residents still walk because they can’t afford a car or to avoid congestion. The city introduced a cable car system in 2014 to address their needs. This system, Mi Teleférico, connects La Paz with its poorer neighbor, El Alto, the highest major city in the world, built another 1,500 feet up the mountains.

La Paz is impoverished, but El Alto is also a grim place, home to recently dispossessed farming families fleeing drought and famine. The families are primarily from indigenous backgrounds, and they face additional hardships seeking jobs and opportunities. Until Mi Teleférico, they were only connected to opportunities in the more prosperous city below by slow buses on long, winding roads.

The cable cars were designed to cost less than the buses, and are powered by the sun. Residents use them to get to the sprawling markets in El Alto, and tourists use them for the stunning views of the cities below.

The image of those cable cars and the bridges lingers long after I first saw them. I keep reflecting on how this infrastructure, a gift from the state government, has empowered so many people and changed their lives so dramatically.

We visit neighborhoods that Luis remembers from his last trip, before the bridge, and he remarks on the improvements. Unsteady brick shacks have been upgraded into sturdy concrete homes, safer and more stable over the soft soil and steep slopes they are built on.

I am reminded that it is often the simplest thing, like building a bridge—or sponsoring a child—that can make all the difference.

Parts of La Paz may just as well have been on the moon for those without the means to drive. Now, three bridges and these amazing cable carts in the sky connect the city. I am reminded that it is often the simplest thing, like building a bridge—or sponsoring a child—that can make all the difference.

Exploring Pedro Poveda

Of course, we didn’t visit these sites alone. Josefina, our volunteer coordinator, gave us a tour of the city, showing us some of the highlights and attractions. At a bustling market, we ran into two children sponsored through Children Incorporated, Daniel and Nicole, who rushed up to kiss and hug Josefina.

The children’s mother owns a small tienda at the market—a tin shack where she prepares breakfast 7 days a week. By day, the children’s father works as a taxi driver. Their mother works a second shift as a taxi driver after the market closes every evening.

After exchanging money at a local bank, we went to Pedro Poveda. Like everything here, the school is built on a hill, and there are many stairs that lead up to the classrooms. We first visited students in a carpentry class, who are learning the trade. We also visited students in an electronics class working on small electronics like radios, and then a cooking class, where students were learning to combine local food with their meals — pasta with local spinach, or other vegetables.

After, we visited the community center directly across from the school, where Josefina had been the principal of for 15 years. Originally a library, she helped transform the center into an after-school program for students who have parents who work long hours, or suffer from complex behavioral problems and need extra support and love.

The room was filled with children busily working on homework or teaching games. Local university students volunteer their time as after-school tutors. After homework is done, the children are invited to the playroom for crafts and games.

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HOW DO I SPONSOR A CHILD IN BOLIVIA?

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Shelley Callahan | March 21, 2016En Español

Imagine you are a parent and your little boy has had a fever off and on for days now; he is always tired, and his body aches. You think he has malaria. All he needs is medicine, but you are poor and can’t even afford to take him to the doctor — much less get him the medicine he needs to get better. But if he doesn’t get help soon, he could end up having breathing problems for the rest of his life. Or worse, he could die. You are desperate and feel helpless.

Trained professionals run the Dandora Clinic in Kenya.

This is a reality for too many families in and around Kenya’s capital and largest city, Nairobi – but the community clinic at the Dandora Community Center is making a difference. With your help, they can reach even more families, preventing unnecessary health problems, and even death.

Offering services for everyone

Right now, the center looks after the well-being of over 400 kids and counting. Most of its patients have malaria, intestinal parasites, or upper-respiratory infections — or they are pregnant women looking for prenatal care.

The Dandora Community Center wants to offer more health care services, and it has space and the staff with the know-how to do so — but the clinic isn’t in good enough shape. They would like to add family planning, long-term treatment of illnesses, lab services, minor surgeries, and early childhood care to the list of services.

With your help, they can reach even more families, preventing unnecessary health problems, and even death.

In need of more supplies

But they need an estimated $8,000 to make repairs and improvements before these additional services can be offered and they can reach an even wider area. The clinic must buy an autoclave, kits for dressing wounds, a microscope, a machine for testing blood, and a scale for weighing babies. There is plenty of space for the clinic to expand, but the building is in need of repair; the inside needs to be painted, walls need to be redone, and the floor needs tiles.

The location of the Dandora Community Center is also ideal for reaching a large number of people in Nairobi, as it is surrounded by slums, which house more people than less poor areas do.

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HOW DO I SPONSOR A CHILD IN KENYA?

You can sponsor a child in Kenya in one of three ways – call our office and speak with one of our sponsorship specialists at 1-800-538-5381, email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org, or go online to our donation portal, create an account, and search for a child in Kenya that is available for sponsorship.

SPONSOR A CHILD

Shelley Callahan | March 11, 2016En Español

The Pinagpala Feeding Program is a project started by Children Incorporated at the Pinagpala Children’s Center in Tagaytay City, Philippines. In 2000, the center was founded by a local church to provide educational assistance to local children in need. Like Children Incorporated, the Pinagpala Children’s Center operates on the mindset that the cycle of poverty can be broken – and it begins with children.

The Pinagpala Feeding Program

The Children’s Center primarily serves first-through tenth-graders in a small, one-room structure that still belongs to the church that established it over fifteen years ago. In addition to the Pinagpala Feeding Program, the center also offers tutorial assistance and an educational curriculum, including daily group activities and workshops.

Feeding programs in the Philippines help ensure children in our program have nutritious food every day.

Almost half of all Filipinos earn less than $2.00 a day, which limits their access to food, particularly nutritional food. There are 25 children who are currently enrolled in and benefit greatly from Children Incorporated’s Pinagpala Feeding Program, which provides them with a nutritious meal before and after school each day.

Helping children to be their best

Funds raised for the program are used by the Children’s Center to purchase vegetables, meats, grains, and cooking supplies; a contribution of just $15 a month will feed a child two meals daily. Without adequate meals and proper nutrition, children are unable to perform at their best, especially in an academic environment. Hunger can be overwhelming and incredibly distracting – and so can wondering when the next meal will be.

Poor nutrition may also result in malnourishment, which in turn often stunts emotional and psychological growth. With a full belly, children are better able to concentrate in school; they are more alert and are better able to retain information.We have already seen a dramatic difference in the physical growth and overall performances of the children who are enrolled in the Pinagpala Feeding Program.

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HOW DO I SPONSOR A CHILD IN THE PHILIPPINES?

You can sponsor a child in the Philippines in one of three ways – call our office and speak with one of our sponsorship specialists at 1-800-538-5381, email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org, or go online to our donation portal, create an account, and search for a child in India that is available for sponsorship.

SPONSOR A CHILD

Shelley Callahan | March 3, 2016En Español

Children Incorporated works in collaboration with the Father Andeweg Institute for the Deaf (FAID) in Riad El Solh Beirut, Lebanon.

Among the students who attend this school are many Syrian child refugees who have been hearing-impaired since birth. Their families must face the enormous challenge of adequately accommodating the special needs of a deaf child while fleeing their home country in search of safety.

The need for more sponsors

These refugee households are particularly lacking, since without any support from the Lebanese government because of their immigration status, it is incredibly difficult for them to provide their children with the equipment, care, and nutrition they need to get an education. More child refugees continue to enroll in the Children Incorporated program
at the school, so your support is very desperately needed.

Through our association with the FAID and the generosity of our sponsors and donors, many children are already receiving medical and psychological care, food, speech therapy lessons and clothing. The need is still great for so many others, who, if sponsored, would experience a dramatic positive change in their lives. Without support, the odds against children at FAID will continue to be stunting, and they will miss a chance to overcome insurmountable obstacles.

the high cost of helping children

Powerful hearing aids alone cost between $400 and $600 each, and they are essential for a deaf child to have – especially in school. Hearing today will give these kids the promise of a brighter, more vibrant tomorrow – a tomorrow in which they have the potential to succeed, even as refugees.

Additionally, the school needs a generator, equipment for the science lab for making ear molds, materials for the speech and language departments, and school supplies. The estimated cost of fulfilling all of these needs exceeds $15,000.

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HOW DO I SPONSOR A CHILD IN LEBANON?

You can sponsor a child in Lebanon in one of three ways – call our office and speak with one of our sponsorship specialists at
1-800-538-5381, email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org, or go online to our donation portal, create an account, and search for a child in Lebanon that is available for sponsorship.

SPONSOR A CHILD

Shelley Callahan | February 19, 2016En Español

Children Incorporated’s Director of International Programs, Luis Bourdet, recently received a report from our affiliate Colegio Vida (Life School) at the Juan Apostol School in Villa Nueva, just outside of Guatemala City. With the help of contributions from our sponsors and donors, 103 high school graduates of the Juan Apostol School graduated in 2015 with Colegio Vida certifications that will help put them on the path to professions with a future.

Cross-culturally, one of the greatest challenges to graduates is the practical application of academic knowledge. With its motto being “An Institution Created to Make a Difference,”Colegio Vida addresses this challenge by offering Computer Repair and Maintenance, Graphic Design, Culinary Arts, and Cosmetology.

From elementary school to high school levels, students interested in Computer Equipment Repair and Maintenance learned a variety of skills, from indentifying parts of a computer to cleaning and maintenance.

Many programs for many kids

Each of these vocational training courses emphasizes personal and academic formation for individual achievement. This training is a requirement for certain types of high school diplomas in the Juan Apostol School. Last year, 50 Computer Science students graduated with Computer Repair and Maintenance certification; 25 Arts and Science students with Graphic Design certification; 13 Tourism graduates with certification in Culinary Arts; and 15 Bilingual Secretary and Administrative students with certification in Cosmetology.

From elementary school to high school levels, students interested in Computer Equipment Repair and Maintenance learned a variety of skills, from identifying parts of a computer to cleaning and maintenance.

Students teaching one another

Students help teach each other skills they have learned.

School staff administered cooking classes which allowed for personnel to spend time with students outside of the scholarly setting. One student assignment was to prepare food for the quinceanera of female students. (The quinceanera is a birthday celebration for girls who are turning fifteen and is considered to be a rite of passage from childhood to womanhood in Latin America.)

Already certified Cosmetology students instructed high school students interested in Cosmetology and the relationship between the two groups proved to be a mutually-beneficial one. The current students received skills training from the graduates, and the graduates were able to practice their trade by instructing the students.

In addition to these programs, Colegio Vida offers a variety of summer courses for children, from cooking lessons to cleaning techniques. All classes focus on following instructions and helping out at home so that these children may take full advantage of their school break.

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HOW DO I SPONSOR A CHILD IN GUATEMALA?

You can sponsor a child in Guatemala in one of three ways – call our office and speak with one of our sponsorship specialists at 1-800-538-5381, email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org, or go online to our donation portal, create an account, and search for a child in India that is available for sponsorship.

SPONSOR A CHILD