Back to School

In our first full day here back in El Salvador we went to visit Amun Shea.  If you have not heard about the school, please go back a few pages and read about how we came to find this place and how our own efforts have brought us back.  On our last trip the school housed 52 students K-3rd grade (12 plus per grade).  They all learned in a single 4 room building on a mostly barren tract of rocky land with little more than elbow grease and imagination keeping the place together.  Within their first year, Amun Shea had gained friends from around the globe and received recognition from within El Salvador for academic achievement and was looking to expand.

What difference does a year make?  Well, we saw the answer this  morning.  The school has expanded.  It is now pre-K through 4th grade (18 plus per year) and spread out through 3 separate school buildings, a nutritional center (more on that later), water systems, full bathroom facilities, an outdoor complex with a future garden project built by MIT volunteers and still room to expand.  

We were welcomed back with warmth and a mini concert by the new award winning school choir. The music program has won national competitions despite the lack of musical instruments (hint-hint for anyone out there holding onto unused guitars and keyboards that have been gathering dust waiting to be donated to a good cause).  

Many of the children recognized us while we were making our way around the complex with our cameras.  The more outgoing students still hammed it up for the lens while the shy ones giggled while hiding there faces in their hands. We will bring you these photos over the next week.

We continue to be impressed by the evolution of the school here.  If Amun Shea were to be transplanted in Westchester it would be an inspiration for its imagination, openness and positive learning environment.  Here in Perquin, with the backdrop of post-war politics, an economy dependent on aid and sheer luck, and a notoriously poor national education system, what they have accomplished here at Amun Shea in a year and a half is no short of  miracle.

Over the next few days, we will try in this blog to highlight its development and the hard working people who have sacrificed to make it happen.