Monthly News

May, 2012

The story is all in pictures this month, so many good pictures of so many good things happening.  The family of Ricardo Martinez Badilla has a new house, thanks to Bill and Linda Wayman and their daughter Holly.  The new classrooms at Pablo Antonio Cuadra are full of students, thanks to Builders Beyond Borders.  We have a new look to our office building, thanks to all our ayudantes.  Plus there are pictures of Mother’s Day celebrations in the schools, clothing sales in the schools, and plenty of volunteer photos.

Steve Lewine, Chairman, along with Rhonda Baker, Kathy Jamison and Amy Schroeder-Riggio of Builders Beyond Borders visited to attend the inaugurations of the classrooms built by their groups at Nueva Esperanza High School, and at Pablo Antonio Cuadra.  This group consisting of high school students from Connecticut, U.S.A. brought an enormous contribution to Nicaragua’s development.  In addition to their classroom building projects with us, they built a foot bridge, built a community kindergarten, and built housing for the poor in other parts of Nicaragua this year. 

A former volunteer Ryan Wiggins has been helping behind the scenes to promote our Face Book page.  You can help by adding La Esperanza Granada to your pages – as an organization we can’t be a ‘friend’ but by adding our page to your ‘pages’ you will receive links to videos, blogs, pictures and news.  All of this helps spread awareness of the educational needs of the children here.

More news about the Kennedymars walk taking place in the Netherlands in June.  This started 50 years ago when the then U.S. President J. F. Kennedy wanted to raise the national level of fitness and said that each civil servant should be able to walk 50 miles in 20 hours.  The village of Someren took this on as a challenge and have been doing the walk each year since.  They have listed La Esperanza Granada on their website as a beneficiary too – here is the link: tinyurl.com/esperanzamars

We received $457 from an Appalachian State University service learning project, where helping non profit organizations was a part of students course work.  The students worked with us through Skype and email, and held events to raise both funds and awareness, they had some great ideas for fundraising.  Their funds are going to be used towards the end of year excursions which are so important for the school children.   Also Larry Price sent us $75, and former vol Michael Geissler sent $140 specifically to help the classes that he had worked with to have enough money for pencils, notebooks etc. for the rest of the school year.   New volunteers Charlotte and Alice brought toys and crayons with them too.

Volunteer here at present are Lynda Smith, Mary Pearce, Irmgard Schnall, Barbara Krainer, Alejandro Real Peguero, Sandra Spijkman, Jeanine Langkamp, Katrina Fralick, Asa Borgas, Lisandro Nanzer, Charlotte Penicaud, Karlijn Nijboer, Ellen Pylad, Manne Tornberg, Alice Cascioli, Michael Schulmeyer, Stella Werner, Miriam Lammenett, Julien Dao, Will Crumpacker, and Lisa and Jill Antrobus.

The photo link: https://picasaweb.google.com/laesperanzagranada/May12pics?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ-95oiEkOWMEw

And here is a sneak preview of International Children’s day we will be celebrating in the schools next week – volunteers and ayudantes practicing for the Snow White play: www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1pLs5fTWpk&feature=em-share_video_user