La Esperanza weekly newsletter

Here's this week's message from our office:

Seems like it's been a very long week. You will have all the news up the the end of February from the monthly so this is what has happened since - plus some things for the coming week.

Firstly we will have new volunteer Kyle Willets starting on Monday, and another new face that you will see in the office a little in coming weeks is Iain Smy who will be helping us with some computer organization. Iain, who is a friend of the organization for some time now has come down from Canada for a 4 month plus stay in Granada - and he arrived on Thursday night with 40,000!!! children's chewy vitamin tablets. This will give us enough for a whole school year. The district directora Margarita said that the food should start during March too, so we can then give the vitamins at food time and get the maximum benefit for the children, which will hopefully improve their learning capacity. This is one of dreams we have had for a couple of years to be able to give vitamins to all the younger children. Other good news is that the food this year is supposed to include vegetables as well as rice and beans.

We have also had donations of $100 from Denton and Terry Sparks from U.S.A., plus $100 from Nuria Terrigausa in Spain. Plus we have had lots of people bringing clothing in to the office, packets of crayons etc.

Nigel as of this week is fully in the role of Volunteer Coordinator, so he will be able to help with any ideas or plans you may have. Nigel and Christy organized a great day at the community center on Thursday with a group led by John Ogle, who completely cleaned up the yard there, and I believe it is now looking great.

Becca is working on some health clinics to be run at the schools and/or community center from two groups who will be here in the coming months and want to help us - these are both quite sizeable medical groups. We seem to be getting more and more enquiries of this kind which is great. We are starting this week with some children for eye tests with an optician too, and although we have had some donations, the eye testing is cheap, but if they all need glasses we only currently have funds for nine children to get glasses (though of course if we need some can come from general funds) but if anyone has some ideas that can help us more effectively help with eyeglasses please talk to Becca.

La Epifania had no school on Friday due to teacher training and I believe there will be no school there next Friday - but need to check on this. Elba Zamora had no pre-school on Friday. I know that we often receive short notice of when there will be no school or early closures - but could you please put it on the notice board in the office as soon as you know of anything like this. We may need to know for English teaching, School nurse, health team, builders going out to the school for repairs, promotion tours etc. So it is important please to make sure everyone has a chance to know.

The high school kids and lots of volunteers had a terrific afternoon on Friday at the Laguna. Seems like we need to have some more things of this kind to help motivate the high school children rather than just tutoring. When going to places like the Laguna though it is important that it should be seen as just individuals going with children as the organization doesn't have any kind of insurance or anything that would protect us, or more importantly help the child/family in the event of an accident.

Some hard goodbye's this week. Especially to Jan and Eva who have been here for six months - even though Jan has worked with Casas de la Esperanza for the past three months, Jan and Eva have been very much a part of La Esperanza Granada. It was Eva who really got us off the ground with Radio Volcan - plus both of them have been great team members, leaders, fundraisers, and good all round friends. Carolyn has also decided to finish this week, but has left some great things behind her, notably the volunteer diary which has greatly simplified my work. Carolyn will of course also be our star when the Discovery Channel shows Granada to the world. Carolyn did great work in promotion; Stefan is now going to take over doing the tours and helping with promotion. Another loss is Lynette who was working in all the schools with English - though she had to shorten her stay Lynette was great to work with and will be missed.

Next Saturday's library duty is for Fiona and Mike. This week Fenna and Lizzie went up with Doctor Patricia.

Today is Isletas day, and I believe a baseball (soccer?) game day too - good luck to our team, and for any I don't see at the Isletas, see you through the week.
Regards, Pauline.