It’s going to be a good December

All four chocolatadas are fully funded, thanks to some folks who stepped forward in response to our recent request for help. That means 71 kids in four different villages will be getting toys, panetone, candy and a decent meal. Two of the villages; Alto Peru and El Carmen will have live entertainment. Los Bances and the vaso de leche program in San Francisco, Campodonico were last-minute decisions so their chocolatadas, because of time and finances will be scaled down, but that beats no Chocolatada at all.

The dates of the chocolatadas are:

Saturday, December 10 - San Francisco, Campodonico

Friday, December 16 – El Carmen

Monday, December 19 – Los Bances and Alto Peru

We’re close to finishing all the buying, organizing, sorting and trying to find room in our house for all of this stuff. It’s a good thing Brian is at the university because he couldn’t get into his room. We haven’t sorted out all of the costs yet but it looks like we’ll be under our estimates.

The parent’s association in Alto Peru and El Carmen have told us that several villagers have volunteered the use of their homes for the chocolatada and have CD players available and people who know how to operate them. This last item has often been a problem at past chocolatadas. Much of the entertainer’s routines requires music.

There won’t be any more school projects this year so the four chocolatadas will wrap up 2016. Any further donations received will be held for projects next year.

We’ll be posting photos of the chocolatadas and thanking those responsible for contributing to them. As always, we wish that the people who contributed could be with us to feel the excitement and accept the appreciation. It’s been a good year, and being able to finish it with four chocolatadas is the pièce de résistance. Thank you.