El Tigre and La Cañada School Improvement Project
The El Tigre and La Cañada School Improvement Project is a new project that I just started with the community. I decided to work with this community on this project because of the level of commitment they have shown in the water project, my proximity to the community (a 3 kilometer walk), and the obvious necessity of this project and the benefit it will have for the community.
Currently El Tigre and La Cañada has one school room (26’ by 15’) and one teacher for 52 students in the 1st through 6th grade. The room is so crowded that some of the students must sit on the floor in order to attend school. They also have a separate very small building (about 8’ x 8’) for the 8 Kindergartners who are taught by a volunteer. The Kindergarten room has no door, no paint, no light, no desks, and no resources. Additionally the school has two pit latrines serving the students that has been in use for nearly 5 years and will soon be full and no longer usable.
The school improvement project addresses several of these issues:
- A new room for the 4th-6th grade connected to the current classroom.
- Two new latrines which will be built during a one day workshop with the community in order to teach the community members how to build a pit latrine. The community is currently discussing whether they would prefer to build pit latrines or composting latrines. The basic (and quick) difference is that a pit latrine is cheaper and easier to build but only lasts a few years and aren’t terribly pleasant to use. The composting latrine is more expensive, more difficult to build, requires specific maintenance, but is usable for an indefinite period of time. Since this community currently has no running water these are the only two latrine options.
- Lighting, a door, a finished window (currently no screen), and paint for the Kindergarten.
The community and I are working together on a SPA-MOF (sorry, not sure what it stands for) grant through Peace Corps. This is a onetime $5,000 grant given by Peace Corps in coordination with USAID for a small community project. It’s pretty tough to get the grant because there are a lot of requirements. However I am confident that we will get the grant if we can address some of the issues the project presents (such as the fact that the road for about 100 meters is washed out to the school and the community will have to donate time and labor to rebuild it so that we can get the materials to the school).
I want to give a huge shout-out to my mom who is being a champ and is donating her time to draw us up the plans for the addition to the school. I would love more help from the USA on any of these projects. I think it is very important for us all to give just a little even if it is just a small bit of time.
I am also working directly with the students in this school on a World Map project which is a Peace Corps initiative. Basically we are painting a giant map of the world on the side of the school. I am doing this with 5th grade who studies all of the Central and South Americas and 6th grade who studies all of the countries of the world.
We are also starting a Colgate program, another Peace Corps initiative together with Colgate, to teach kids in Kindergarten through 6th grade how to brush their teeth and why. This is common sense in the USA as societally it is normal to brush your teeth. However in Honduras this isn’t the case and there are large amounts of cavities and teeth issues here. Especially with the introduction of Coca-Cola as basically a replacement for water here. Grrr.
I’m hoping to start a reforestation project as well but I am going to wait until we finish World Map first.
Below for your interest I put some images of the school as it is right now. I took these after school so the students are not there but I will take some with the students soon.
If you are interested in helping out with the El Tigre and La Cañada school I can say that we could really use donations for school materials. Especially for the Kindergarten who literally has nothing.
Rebecca J Williams
Peace Corps Volunteer
H14 Water and Sanitation Project
Sabanagrande, Francisco Morazán, Honduras
Phone: 011-504-9576-2436
Email: rebecca.williams.pchn@gmail.com
Pictures of the School
Teaching about brushing teeth. It´s a long walk uphill (about a mile) so I´m all sweaty.
Starting the World Map Geography project
Outside doing activities on teeth brushing. About half the kids are present.
Urban Kindergarten Improvement Project
This is also a new project that just landed in my lap through a friend’s sister-in-law who has a son in Kindergarten here in Sabanagrande in the urban school. The Kindergarten needs quite a bit of help as they need a new roof, a cistern to keep water so they can flush their toilet (Sabanagrande frequently runs out of water and storage cisterns are very helpful when this happens), and like the El Tigre and La Cañada school have no resources. Unfortunately, my resources are stretched to the maximum as I am already looking for funds for two water systems and I can only apply for one SPA-MOF grant at a time. I explained to the Kindergarten Parent/Teacher Organization that they were a bit late in the game but that I could possibly help them find materials for the kids.
What I should try to get across about the Kindergartens here in Honduras is that they are basically independent of the 1st-6th school and are given little or no funding by the government. Often times they do not even have a paid teacher but instead rely on volunteer teachers. So when I say there is little or no funding what I am saying is that these Kindergartners go to school to nothing. No resources at all. Imagine sending your kid to school to a room full of nothing.
The parent group tries to raise money to help and recently put on a rather astounding music competition. However at the moment the funds they raise are going largely to infrastructure such as the cistern and roof and even fundraisers only yield so much in a country with a 66% unemployment rate. So I am hoping to work with a few elementary schools in the USA to cross our cultures perhaps through some Skype conversations, sharing some mail (obviously artwork mainly and maybe with some Spanish-speaking kids in the US) and hopefully get some resource help from the USA school such as:
- Crayons, markers, colored pencils, paper, construction paper, string, scissors, etc.
- Teaching materials
- Games, toys, activities, etc.
- And so on…
If you know of a school or if you are a teacher who would be interested in working with me on this project please let me know. I am looking for a few schools to help me with this project and possibly the Kindergarten in El Tigre and La Cañada as well. I feel pretty strongly that this would be a relatively easy project to do together with a teacher in the USA and would yield benefits on both sides.
Sincerely,
Rebecca J Williams
Peace Corps Volunteer
H14 Water and Sanitation Project
Sabanagrande, Francisco Morazán, Honduras
Phone: 011-504-9576-2436
Email: rebecca.williams.pchn@gmail.com
