If you have been in touch with me other than through my blog, you may already know about a project I have developed with three other Rotary Scholars in Valparaíso called Scholars for Schools. In a nutshell, this project is helping to bridge the gap between public and private education in central Chile by renovating free space in local schools to create multi-media libraries.
Education and children at risk are some of the main focuses of Rotary International and certainly also some of the most pressing social needs in Chile. After two months of designing and organizing the structure of the project, we are finally ready to receive donations and we encourage any humanitarian minded person to get involved. Most questions about the project can be found at http://scholarsforschools.org.
The Saturday before last we had an inaugural activity in the first of what we hope to be a succession of elementary schools. Over 40 people came to help us dust, sweep sand and paint the room which is to become the future library of Escuela David Ben Gurión in cerro (hill) Las Cañas.
This school is in a barely accessible location, which means they need our help more than ever. Many of the schools in the cerros are completely forgotten about by people carrying on their daily life in the lower part of the city (referred to as the “plan”), neighboring Viña del Mar or wealthier cerros. The school has nearly 200 students and two school schedules (day and night) to accommodate space constraints. The majority of the children (pre-kinder to 8th grade) are on a government meal program called Puente and based on information gleaned from schools officials, these meals may be all students eat for the entire day.
Take a moment to look at the pictures from our cleaning day on May 31st and share this post with others by using the share tool at the bottom.
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1.) Rotary Scholar Nathan Gill and volunteer Fernanda hard at work scraping dirty windows 2.) Rotaract Valparaíso volunteers get their hands dirty with some paint 3.) Rotary Scholar Susan Owen taking a moment to read with a student who came to visit us 4.) Cataloging old books! 5.) Some of the volunteers coming together for a group photo 6.) Scholars for Schools!
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