pictures of kindergarten class July 2008
Tierra Linda Elementary School.
There is one school with 250 children registered. The government has not done any repairs on this school in 13 years. They provide the teachers, and some help with materials, but not enough to support the school and its students. The teachers do not have desks and there are no bookshelves.Seventy children were turned away this year due to lack of space. There are 6 classrooms, 2 of them in the process of being completed and 3 are having their roofs repaired. One of the classrooms has a water tank on the roof that is leaking onto the floor and causing mud.
The Kindergarten classroom
Other classrooms
A festival at the school
Morning Snack
The repairs on some classrooms and the addition of two more classrooms has been funded by private donations. The men in the village have worked on their day off to finish the roof. They are nearly completed but furniture and supplies are still needed to furnish the rooms.
Malnutrition is a chronic problem. The basic diet for many children is bread and coffee in the morning - this is a very watered down sugary coffee. Tortillas, beans and rice for lunch and often, bread and coffee for dinner again. For many children from poor families their diet often consists of tortillas and salt. Many children go hungry.
The director of the Tierra Linda school asked Mayan Families.org (www.mayanfamilies.org) to help supply the children with a snack every day. He explained that most of the children came to school without having eaten breakfast. It is not the custom for children to bring any food to school and probably most of them would have nothing to bring.Mayan Families.org got funding from a Canadian group to provide the whole school with a nutritious cereal snack every morning. It is called Incaparina and it is a mix of cereals, full of vitamins. It is cooked like oatmeal. The mothers take turns cooking the oatmeal and each child brings a piece of wood to school for the fire to cook the oatmeal.
The school had no balls until Mayan Families.org gave them five soccer ballsthat had been donated.
Clean drinking water is not readily available so often the water that they drink causes them to get ill with parasites. These parasites cause stomach pains and diarrhea.
Parents can't afford to take sick children to a doctor or to the dentist when they get a toothache. Mayan Families donated walter filters to the classroom and now for the first time, the children are able to drink clean water.
Malnutrition is a chronic problem. The basic diet for many children is bread and coffee in the morning - this is a very watered down sugary coffee. Tortillas, beans and rice for lunch and often, bread and coffee for dinner again. For many children from poor families their diet often consists of tortillas and salt. Many children go hungry.
The director of the Tierra Linda school asked Mayan Families.org (www.mayanfamilies.org) to help supply the children with a snack every day. He explained that most of the children came to school without having eaten breakfast. It is not the custom for children to bring any food to school and probably most of them would have nothing to bring.Mayan Families.org got funding from a Canadian group to provide the whole school with a nutritious cereal snack every morning. It is called Incaparina and it is a mix of cereals, full of vitamins. It is cooked like oatmeal. The mothers take turns cooking the oatmeal and each child brings a piece of wood to school for the fire to cook the oatmeal.
The school had no balls until Mayan Families.org gave them five soccer ballsthat had been donated.
Clean drinking water is not readily available so often the water that they drink causes them to get ill with parasites. These parasites cause stomach pains and diarrhea.
Parents can't afford to take sick children to a doctor or to the dentist when they get a toothache. Mayan Families donated walter filters to the classroom and now for the first time, the children are able to drink clean water.
Most families cannot afford to buy shoes. Some of these children have to walk great distances over dirt roads and in the wet season, the mud rots the shoes.
Mayan Families.org has been organizing help for them and they have supplied at least half of the children with shoes, some backpacks, clothing and school supplies but they still need more. Mayan Families.org also recently organized two days of medical clinics at the school to benefit the whole community. The doctor confirmed that most of the children were malnourished.
Mayan Families.org has been organizing help for them and they have supplied at least half of the children with shoes, some backpacks, clothing and school supplies but they still need more. Mayan Families.org also recently organized two days of medical clinics at the school to benefit the whole community. The doctor confirmed that most of the children were malnourished.
The children at this school will greatly benefit from having more printed and educational materials in their classrooms. We are raising funds to build bookcases and to buy more desks and chairs.
The children got very excited when a group of volunteers gave them tennis balls and small toys.
No comments:
Post a Comment