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.

Notes from our Travel Day

We have been welcomed back to El Salvador!  It has been a long day of travel for us and we are very tired.  But as we sit in our now familiar table in the dining room of the Perkin Lenca Hotel catching up with our good friend Ron, we feel good.  

A few notes from our trip so far:  The airline TACA INternational did a wonderful job of flying us here with a few dozen others, but the flight was less than half full.  It is hard to tell if this is due to the economy, the approaching rainy season in Central America or the threat of the swine-flu that has been hanging over the heads of the traveling public (dare we say partly due to overblown sensational coverage by mainstream media).  The flu has indeed hit the region this far south and evidence of concern lies in the doctors masks worn by about half of the airline employees, but we don't fell all that worried.  Consider that only 2 cases have been found in all of El Salvador thus far, compared to the 1,000 plus that has hit the U.S including 50 reported in our hometown of New York City.

The difference in heat and humidity is the first adjustment that we will have to make as it hit us like a wave once we stepped outside of the airport.  Luckily, the climate in the mountains here in Morazon is much more temperate and cool breezes tend to dominate in the evenings.   The ride here was pretty much the same as past trips, only with less wrong turns and the comfort of knowing our surroundings.  Since it did not rain during our 4 hours car ride, we were able to enjoy some of the natural beauty that the country has offer (like the dominating view of Volcan De St. Vincente  seen above).

Thats it for now, we are up early tomorrow to say hello to Amun Shea.

Oh, yes...for those keeping track, we are 2 hours behind you on the East Coast.

Southward Ho!

In just a few hours, we will be on Taca Airlines on our way to Perquin via San Salvador, San Miguel and a few dozen other El Salvador way points. By now you all should have received our yearly update and the announcement of this trip, so there is no need to recap here.

The good news: We are able to make this trip and help out our friends at the Amun Shea school who continue to grow and prosper despite myriad obstacles in their way.

The Bad News: As expected during the start of this rainy season, the weather report is calling for 60-80% chance of serious rain storms each day we are there.

That's all for now. Wish us luck and see you all when we return. Check back here often to see what we are up to. We will be posting daily reports from our trip.

Return To Perquin

Focal Point Aid heads back to EL SALVADOR.

On Wednesday May 13th, members of Focal Point Aid will head back to El Salvador to visit our friends at the Amun Shea school. As we mentioned in our most recent update, because of generous donations to Focal Point Aid, we were able to purchase desks and textbooks for the students at Amun Shea. Most of the goods have arrived and we have been invited by the school and the Perkin Educational Opportunities Foundation (PEOF) to visit and witness the progress of the program.

As you may remember, Amun Shea is a private school program in Perquin, El Salvador in the Morazon Province. It opened last year for 52 students Kindergarten through 3rd grade. It quickly showed great success and is a model for what education can do for a community that has gone through some tough times.

We are happy to be able to help, and are hopeful that our relationship with this school and its families will inspire others to reach out and assist in any way that they can.

Follow along with our trip by reading our Travel Blog, and if you wish to help out please make a donation here.

An overdue update

This was our year end update that was sent out in January. We appologize for the tardiness of the post.

Hello friends and Happy New Year. Thank you all for your well wishes. We have received some e-mails and questions regarding our projects, so we want to send you this project update to keep you all up to speed.

The good news!
Our friends at the Amun Shea School in El Salvador have entered their second year and have expanded their program to include grades K-4. As an initial aid package, Focal Point Aid will purchase a full set of textbooks for all the students at Amun Shea including Math, Science, Social Studies, and Language. We will also fund the building of 36 new desks and chairs for the school. Our gifts to the school may also include other schools supplies as well as musical instruments. We will deliver these goods this spring.

Coffee Bay, South Africa

Our contact with the community in Coffee Bay, South Africa has been harder to maintain over these past few months. However, we are confident that we will be able to travel back sometime this summer to deliver an aid package to the Bekisizwe and Madekeni schools similar to the one we are donating to El Salvador. With it, we will continue the initial planning for new school buildings.

The economy and Focal Point Aid

As you all know it has been a hard year for charities and non-profits. Many organizations have suffered greatly and others have been forced to completely shut their doors. The tragedy of this situation is that as the stability of our economy waivers, the people of the world with the greatest needs suffer the most.

When we created Focal Point Aid a year ago, we knew that many charity groups are weighed down by the burden of administrative costs like salaries and office space. Thankfully, since these costs are not part of who we are, we have not been forced to abandon our work. However, the state of the economy will make it a little bit harder for us to complete our current projects in the timeframe we first had envisioned. Your help is needed more than ever. We except donations through our website or by mail.

Thank You

It has been quite a year for Focal Point Aid. We traveled half way round the world and back, endured tough economic times, suffered a few tropical diseases and here we are, still standing. We look forward to the successes and challenges of our second year.
Keep in touch. We have several events on the horizon.

Thanks again for your support,

Joe, John, Pete and Heather

Your Turn To Help!

OK, Friends...now it's your turn.

You have been hearing us for months talk about our project, our trips to South Africa and El Salvador. You have seen the pictures, read the blog, maybe attended a fundraiser or two. Now, we need a few minutes of your time.

Since you are already sitting in front of a computer, this should be a relatively easy way to help, but could turn into a huge boost for our campaign to build new school buildings in Coffee Bay.

We have applied for funding from a charity program sponsored by American Express. So has a hundred other groups. Over the next few weeks, there is an online nomination process. If we are nominated into the top 25, we will then be able to make a presentation to become one of the 5 projects to get funding.

Here is what we need from you:

Nominate us yourself by following these quick steps:

1- Go to www.membersproject.com/project/view/N34DIQ
2-click on "nominate this project" located under the school photo
3-a box will appear click on "sign up as guest member" in blue at bottom of pop up box
4-fill out Name, email address, create password and fill in security code then click on "sign in"
5- You are signed in and ready to vote go to www.membersproject.com/project/view/N34DIQ
6-click on "Nominate this project" YOUR VOTE IS CAST
Project Name is "Schools for an education system in crisis"
www.focalpointaid.org

You do not have to be a member to nominate us, but you will have to sign-in as a guest. The process will only take a few minutes but will help us us in a large way.

Thank you very much!

The People You Meet

You often meet many people on the road while traveling off the beaten path. Perquin is certainly off the beaten path. It is a wonderful crossroads of people and culture. After visiting other places that see very few foreigners and have no NGO presence, we were very surprised to see the high number of aid workers from all over the world here to help out this region.

The Peace Corps for example has had a very long history in this area and still has over 100 volunteers throughout El Salvador. In the short week that we were here, we ran into 5 different Peace Corps workers stationed in the surrounding villages. Lindsey (or leela as she is called by the children who can't pronounce her name yet) is working right here in Perquin. She has been here for about a month of her 2 year commitment and already seems well situated in the community. She helped us immensely while we were here and could not have taught the classes without her.

We met Marie, a newly graduated political scientist from Sweden here to study the role of woman in El Salvadoran politics. Sara (seen above), a teacher from New Mexico has volunteered throughout Central America. Our Paths crossed while she was making her way from Nicaragua to Guatemala. She sat in to observe classes at Amun Shea and helped us teach the photography workshop.

There were 2 grad students here from Harvard and Columbia conducting research for microfinance programs, a woman from San Francisco here to implement arts programs, and a man from England who is the only man on earth who has seen and evidenced the white breasted hawk, which he spotted in the mountains of Morazan (this last one is not a charity worker, but it is a fascinating story).

El Salvador is in a very precarious place right now. Their classification as a "developing nation in need" is changing very soon, and their largest source of foreign aid, the Millenium Project, is about to cut off their funding for El Salvador. There will soon be little money for things like infrastructure, education and medical care. With so many people out of work, the only source of income for some families is sent from a father or sister sending back their salary from abroad. These remitants make up a staggering 20% of the GNP. If foreign aid is suddenly cut off, it will become even more difficult for people to survive.

Help from charities like FocalPointAid or programs like many we have seen this week from outside organizations may be that little extra push that people here need.
The people of Perquin are strong, proud and hard-working. If we can do something as simple as help build them a school building for their children, we are happy to help.

As for all the wonderful people we have met: Keep up all the good work, we will see you soon.