|
First school for
Kuna children
Located in Arrajan, a tropical area twenty minutes drive north
of Panama City, in the midst of a shanty settlement, where several
thousand Kunas live in extreme poverty: their children uneducated.
|
|
|
The tribes of
Panama: Kuna,
Ngobe, Emberá, Buglé,
etc.
Our contract with them is to teach their uneducated children
to read and write, but not do anything to change their indigenous
culture. |
|
Getting Started in Panama - First staff,
first steps
|
 |
| Ana
Tere, Isabel (Facilitator), Nadiuzka (Community co-ordinator),
First school (Arraijan - 15 minutes from Panama City), Jan Van
Erp (potential Co-ordinator) with Bruce, & potential students. |
|
We
salute our Volunteers who keep returning
|
|
(While
many others still work with us in their home countries)
When we started our volunteer program we didn't dream
so many kind talented people would take up the challenge
of aiding 's poorest children as their own personal
project. Thank you all. |
|
|
We opened new
schools
in other parts of
Latin America.Trujillo (Esperanza),
Chiclayo/Lambayeque
(Las Dunes). Now we will stop growing until we can
sustain our present commitments. |
 |
Pictured
here is Las Dunas school outside Chiclayo
|
|
|
Quiet Irishman
sponsors and names a school after his Alma Mater
back home.
Gavin Molloy, with
help from some generous friends has patroned "Scoil
losa"school
in the barrio La Esperansa
|
So far 24 children are attending. |
|
|
 Volunteer
Life at Bruce - Photos of volunteers who have
served or are serving at the various centres of Bruce. Also
photos of some of our children in class, & at play.
|
They
will still go to bed hungry tonight..
|
| Panama
Open - April - With the participation of Kinder Zon
we have opened our project in in Panama, and started the
first schools for indigenous children (& some of their
mothers). Our plan is to get enough schools functioning
around the capital city to be able demonstrate to the
Government of Panama that the large population of extremely
poor children not in School must be urgently helped, as
we are doing. |
Our provisional centre, in Arraijan - replaced
by a hostel sharing in Old Town Panama City. |
|
 |
Mikael,
our first director in Panama.He served as project coordinator
for our centre in Chiclayo, Peru, and then received additional
training in Trujillo before setting off for Panama. We counted
on his contageous optemism, his command of Spanish and his Swedish
ingenuity to help him run what we have already established and
to build on it. |
|
HIV / AIDS pandemic thrives
in Latin America
|
The publisher of the book "What's
a Virus, Anyway", is coming to volunteer, and giving
a quantity of these books in Spanish.. |
The UN has declared
that the number infected with HIV/AIDS in Latin America
is greater than that of Europe and the USA combined.
If you live in one of these countries you would not know
this - it is not reported in the media, talked about in
the chambers of Government. They are in denial. But we
know it is there, children and families in the communities
we help are suffering: and there is little help available.
|
|
 For
over three decades Latin America has endured the unenviable
distinction of having more street children per capita than
any place on earth. What is less known is that for every child
who sleeps in the street there are 300 more in practically
the same condition who live on the street by day but at night
sleep under a plastic sheet or in a woven read or adobe hovel
with their siblings. Both are classed as "Street Children",
the distinction being 'IN' the street, as opposed to 'ON'
the street [those 'IN' are more likely to be addicted to drugs].
When we first arrived in we worked with both types of
Street Children, but for the past two years we have concentrated
our efforts and resources in helping the much larger but less
known population of Street Children who live On the street;
those abandoned in their own homes. During this time we have
managed to open hub centres in 6 cities, with 20 satellite
children's centres located in the poorest barrios: where we
educate, feed, medicate and care for them.
Won't
you join us!. |
| On 9 January - We reopen
our programme to educate the poorest children in Cajamarca.
When we left our original project in the hands of ex volunteers
it was with the understanding that they would carry on this
work;however they chose to operate a homework |
club for children we had already goten into school over a year
ago. So we have returned. Above is our new, larger centre. |
 We succeeded in
enrolling all 27 children of our Las Palmeras shanty school
into the local state school. This was unique in our experience
in view of the facts: it was mid term, we only had a
few months to prepare them, all entered into grades near to
where they would have been had they been regularly attending
school all these years. |
|
The Ministry
of Education have invited us to install our little schools
for very poor children within sellected primary and secondary
schools. We have agreed to operate a pilot in one school,
and if the relationship works: will consider others. |
|
|
..
..
......
......