La Esperanza Granada

Hola La Esperanza friends, It’s that time of month again – your Blogger update from the volunteers! We’re so glad to share with you what we’ve been working on again this month, and have a lot to say. We are getting ready to head off all over Central America with Semana Santa coming, and will have vacations from March 30 th to April 10 th . Hopefully we’ll return well-rested (tan!) and ready for more work in the schools! This month, we welcomed two groups who gave quite a hand in the schools. We had a new group from Builders Beyond Borders (B3) in the USA, who also helped us out in February, working on the new technical high school in San Ignacio. Although we have officially opened and have over 50 students currently enrolled in the school, the building was not yet quite complete. The B3 group finished off the construction of 3 final classrooms, one of which was an extra large room for technical courses which will help the students  for future careers. We also welcomed back carpe...

Two adventurous travelers, Hayley and Andy, just recently made a pit stop on their road trip of Central America to help out at La Esperanza Granada. And now we've hit the Aussie news! Hayley and Andy appear in their local newspaper for their work with La Esperanza Granada The two joined us for a little over 2 weeks as part of our Families for Families project, a program that allows families (or couples, or groups of friends) to raise funds and sponsor a local family for home repairs. Local families are selected from a raffle when students have perfect attendance (low attendance rates are a common problem of the education system) and make a list of possible home improvements. Depending on the financial contribution and needs of the families, volunteers then begin work on the house!  The Guliteries family was living in a poorly ventilated one-room house, with plastic trash bags for walls and a low-hanging roof. Hayley, Andy, and a small group of hard working La Esperanz...

We are so lucky for all of the support we recieve from volunteers, donors, and friends of the organization. A big thank you goes out to volunteer Nabila Amarsy who created this video to show the world what La Esperanza Granada is all about. Watch and see for yourself! And share with your friends! If you are interested in becoming a volunteer (which after that, who isn't?), send us an e-mail at: la_esperanza_granada@yahoo.com and come join us in making a change!

Last week on Feb. 27th, we celebrated a huge accomplishment for La Esperanza Granada... the opening of our brand new technical high school in San Ignacio!  This project has been a long journey, supported by many generous individuals and groups. We broke ground December 31st, 2010, putting up fencing around a plot of land located just down the road from the primary school Nueva Esperanza. Over the years, thousands of dollars and many people have supported the project, from gathering funds to constructing latrines, building classrooms, and painting the buildings. Thanks to all of this hard work, we were able to officially open the high school for the 2012 school year with a class of over 50 students! We of course celebrated the occasion with much happiness, appreciation, and gratitude! After the ribbon cutting, we welcomed words from early donors to the school, Karen Van Eijk and Tom Daniels as well as the group Amped for Education. Without the early support and enthusiasm of these...

Greetings La Esperanza Granada friends, We are excited to bring you our first Blog Edition of the Volunteer LEG E-Newsletter! As with our monthly e-mail newsletter, the Blogger Monthly Update gives you a quick view of our biggest highlights in the last month. We are just completing our first month of the 2012 school year and have many exciting updates to share with you. We started classes on February 13 th , and have been hard at work assisting in the primary schools, teaching English, and providing Computer classes to hundreds of students. This year, we are more in touch with the Ministry of Education than ever before and are pleased to be working so closely together to improve children’s education here in Granada. We are primarily teaching and tutoring in 4 primary schools right now: José de la Cruz Mena, Nueva Esperanza, Pablo Antonio Cuadra, and El Escudo. These schools are all located in very poor barrios of Granada and experience overcrowding and underfunding year after year. T...