Sponsor a Child Today

Month: April 2013

Nicholas Wu and Dylan Goitz, 17, United States

Nicholas Wu and Dylan Goitz of University of Liggett High School, with one of the jars they made to collect change for Education Plus

Volunteer Spotlight – Nicholas Wu and Dylan Goitz

Nicholas Wu and Dylan Goitz, both 17, are currently juniors at University Liggett High School in Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan. Nicholas and Dylan became involved with Education Plus after hearing Executive Director Monica Loveley come speak to the school about her work with the children.  Learning about Education Plus and the children of Pantanal inspired Nicholas and Dylan to make a difference in a very real way.

After a brief preliminary meeting with Monica, Nicholas and Dylan struck out on their own, leading several different initiatives to fundraise for Education Plus. The first was to set aside half of the profits from the school dance for Education Plus.  Next, they dedicated a paid dress-down day to Education Plus, and set up a donation bin in the main lobby of the school. With these initiatives, Dylan and Nicholas managed to raise $800 in just over a month!

Nicholas says:

When Monica came and spoke at Liggett, I felt inspired to go and make a difference in the world. Given all of the death and destruction in our world, I wanted to do something that would help people who were in dire need of assistance. I think that education is a fundamental right that should not be deferred for any child, so this was the perfect way for me to get involved in that field. I got a few people together who interested in helping, and we decided to start a fundraising campaign for Education Plus. With the money we raised, I hope that Education Plus can help break the poverty trap for the Nicaraguan children it helps, helping them to achieve a better life. My experience with Education Plus has been an overwhelmingly positive one, helping me to give back to the world as thanks for all of the opportunities with which I have been endowed. For this work with Education Plus, I am immensely grateful.

Dylan adds:

I got involved because I value children’s education because it is the only way to escape poverty.

Nicholas is  involved in the Civic Orchestra in downtown Detroit as well as the Liggett debate team. He hopes to study something related to policy in college. Dylan loves the sport of rowing and wishes to study engineering in college.

Thank you Dylan and Nicholas for your hard work, for spearheading these initiatives, and for caring about the future of the children of Pantanal.  You can be sure that the funds you raise will go a long long way towards helping us make sure that the children are fed, educated, and provided with school supplies!!

Beach Trip 2013

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Education Plus Annual Beach Day

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The children with their sponsor, Gerry Webb of Casa del Agua

On Saturday, April 20th, 44 students, along with the staff and volunteers of Education Plus, made our 2nd annual trek to the beach for a day of fun, food, sun, and surf. This year the group traveled to the Nicaraguan village of San Juan del Sur, about 2 hours away on the Pacific coast.  As with last year’s trip, this year’s trip was sponsored by Gerry Webb of Casa del Agua in Granada, with food provided by two generous donors from North America. Students were selected based on their conduct in class and attendance.

The day started early as volunteers gathered at the school to prepare the food for the day. Of course the kids were all early as well in anticipation as most of them had never seen the ocean and were very, very excited!

After our traditional banana snack, the two buses were loaded and arrived in San Juan with squeals of delight from the children. Some kids were a bit apprehensive of the water at first, but it didn’t take them long to jump in and enjoy the waves. Thanks to a mixture of local and foreign volunteers, we were able to make sure that every child had an adult taking care of his/her safety at all times.  During the course of the day there was sand castle building, soccer with an american football, kite flying, burying each other in the sand, and of course, lots of splashing and horse-play in the surf.  The kids just could not get enough of being in the water!

For lunch the kids were served two different types of sandwiches, coleslaw, hard boiled eggs, cookies, and milk.

After a couple more hours of wet fun, it was time to head back to Pantanal, but not before a surprise treat. The children were lined up and taken to the local Eskimo Ice Cream Shop for ice cream cones!

Back on the buses and home to Pantanal, a lot of very tired and smiling children had experienced a day they’ll always remember.

Thank you to Gerry Webb, Shirl Lindenberg, and Nadia Ishmael for making this trip possible; for expanding the children’s horizons, rewarding them for their hard work over the past several months, and providing them with an incentive to keep on studying!  A very big thank you also to our wonderful local volunteers and Sabrina, Lena, Francesca, Kenny, Emma, Charlie, and Hannah for assisting us on this day.

April Updates

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Please Like us on Facebook to show your support: www.facebook.com/eduplusnicaragua

Hello everyone,

Long time no updates, but I promise you this one will be a good one :).

In the last three months, thanks to our incredible supporters from around the world, we managed to send all of our students back to school with backpacks, provide many with new clothes and shoes, host a big Easter party for the students, and build a roof and flooring for the outside part of the school house thus tripling our capacity during rainy season, just for starters!

The biggest news is that starting in May, we are completely overhauling our curriculum to teach intensive English to all of our students, from pre-school to 6th grade, for the next 6 months. Why?

1. The point of Education Plus is not just to graduate our students from high school, but, above all, to give them the tools that they need to succeed in life.  In the context of Nicaragua, English is the #1 tool that they need to go on to higher education (even internationally) and to find steady, well-paid employment.

2. After they learn English, we can begin to teach some of their regular subjects (such as math) in English.  Besides killing two birds with one stone, this will allow our volunteers who speak limited Spanish to be able to participate more in teaching and tutoring.

3. All of the children, even the preschoolers, really, really want to learn English.  How great for us to be able to sate their thirst for learning!

Our lead teacher will be Mickey Dodson from Chavalos Nicos, a certified ESL instructor who has over 10 years of experience teaching English to impoverished children in Nicaragua. Over the years she has graduated dozens of students fluent in English and we are incredibly lucky that she is willing to volunteer her time with us.  Older students who are currently on English scholarship to ABC school and who are not able to attend our program because they attend high school in the afternoon will continue attending ABC with their sponsors’ support.

We will still be breaking the children up into three groups, and now while one group is in session learning English outside, the other has the opportunity to receive remedial help with their schoolwork inside of the schoolhouse.  Students will still have the same opportunities to “earn” school supplies to facilitate their public school attendance as well.  The nutrition program will also continue, to the extent that we can afford it.

Right now, we really need help with teacher stipends and food for the children.  To implement the English curriculum, we have three teachers who are willing to join us for a total of $250/month – one to assist with English teaching, one to lead the tutoring program, and Mickey needs her transportation covered.  We really need these teachers to make sure the program is a success, especially because we have large class sizes and periods when we don’t have any volunteers.

Thanks to Samaritan’s International, we are able to provide fortified rice daily to the children. And recently, Leslie Warren of International Peace Projects donated part of her yucca crop to her (we went out to the campo to harvest it!  So much fun!). However, we still need to come up with the funds to purchase fresh vegetables, milk, and fruit. We also found a sponsor for transport for a beach trip to San Juan del Sur this year for 40 of our top attendees, but in order to take advantage of this, we need to raise the money to feed and insure the children on this day as well, approximately $80.  If you can help us with any of these things, especially sponsoring a teacher, please please click on one of the links below:

To make a reoccurring donation, click here and be sure to select reoccurring donation at check out

To make a US tax-deductible contribution, click here to donate to us via our partner, Omprakash.org

To make a donation via Paypal, click here and send to donate@eduplusnicaragua.org.  Please make sure to send this as a personal and not commercial transaction, to avoid fees.

As always, you can see where your donations are going by CLICKING HERE and clicking “View Education Plus Nicaragua Expense Report”.  We upload receipts for as many expenditures as possible.  Because of the particularities of the Omprakash accounting platform, if we used funds other than Omprakash donations (cash, paypal, Wepay), we have to report the expense as $0, but we put the actual amount spent in the description area.

As a highlight, it is incredibly moving to see our students with their bleached out malnourished hair growing out black at the roots, thanks to our nutritional program. Here are just two examples:

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Finally, one big huge thanks to all of our donors who keep this program afloat, and to all of the volunteers, both local and foreign, who have come to assist us over the past year. We wouldn’t exist without you!

Ever gratefully,

Monica Loveley

Executive Director, Education Plus Nicaragua

Semana Santa Celebrations

A Very Happy Easter

Easter week is a very festive time in Nicaragua with lots of parades and parties. With the gracious and generous sponsorship of the Davison family from Washington, DC, the students of Education Plus were treated to their very own Easter Fiesta!!

The dance music started shortly after 10 in the morning, the line of kids for the “Moonwalk Bounce House” was long, you could smell the cotton candy and popcorn in the air, along with the chatter and laughter of over 100 very happy children and many of their parents.

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One of many highlights of the party was the Dance Contest. There were contests for different age groups as well as one for the staff and volunteers. What a hoot!!  It seems that Education Plus has some pretty talented dancers!

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Staff and volunteers dancing to the endless amusement of the rest of the community

Along with the popcorn and cotton candy, the students were served boxed juice drinks and snacks.  Even more exciting, the children received copies of the photos taken of themselves over the last three months, which they are always anxious to receive. To have more than a photo or two of oneself is a rare thing in Pantanal, so the kids are ecstatic when we give them photos.  Finally, to top it all off, at the end of the party, all of the students were presented with Easter gifts that were donated by friends, family, and classmates of the Davisons.  Other than Christmas, we do not usually just give things away to the children, but rather we give them the opportunity to “earn” toys, clothes, and school supplies though good attendance and behavior.  A holiday like Easter, however, was a good excuse for us to depart a bit from the normal rules.

Muchas Gracias to the Davisons and a big thank you to Jordan Lerum from California for bringing down bunny and froggie ears and over 500 photos to the children at our Semana Santa party.  A big thank you also to all of our volunteers and the locals who helped make this party come together for the children.

To see more photos, visit our album on Facebook by clicking HERE

Jexael, Gabi, and Jenner with their friend Jordan Lerum

Jexael, Gabi, and Jenner with their friend Jordan Lerum