We were in Conchucos today to speak with
two school directors to decide what exactly we would be providing to their
schools. Thanks to Clifton B, Chris R, Amy B, the Alice Cool Foundation and
others we have the money to begin this project.
For the primary school we’ll be providing 2
whiteboards and 35 school supply kits. For the pronoei (pre-school) it will be
15 school supply kits, 6 tables and 24 plastic chairs. Fanny modified her
original request for 8 tables and 32 chairs, deciding that she’d probably been
too optimistic about the number of new students she would have. She knows a
carpenter in Chiclayo and will visit him next week with a ‘committee’ of the
village parents to negotiate a price for the tables. The same committee will be
responsible for purchasing the chairs. We’ll be providing 15 school supply kits
to Fanny’s students. We have already placed the order for 50 school bags with
our seamstress and will start buying school supplies tomorrow.
During our visit last week both directors casually
mentioned uniforms but didn’t specifically ask for them. Today they did. Uniforms
are expensive. We did not budget or ask for donations for them. As we were
discussing uniforms, four women entered the classroom. They were at the school
waiting for the government donated food to arrive so they could prepare lunch
for the students. I took the opportunity to ask them for their thoughts about
school uniforms. Promesa Peru has donated uniforms only once, and personally I
was a little uncomfortable about that, not seeing a direct link between
uniforms and kids staying in school. I began the discussion by saying that in
the USA school uniforms don’t exist and that I don’t understand why they seem
to be so important in Peru, and that if I
don’t understand, I can’t expect potential donors to understand. What followed
was an interesting discussion, one that I want to save and expand on in a separate
post probably in the next few days after we’ve made a decision about the
uniforms.
No comments:
Post a Comment