You can help!

Dear Friends and Family,

As friends and family of a Peace Corps Volunteer, you all knew it was coming. That’s right guys, my first donation solicitation! This is a very grassroots project that some of my closest friends from college have been working hard on for the last two years, and it finally has the opportunity to get off the ground. Or, it would have, if the roof of their library hadn’t collapsed. Now, all the money that they have been raising for the last two years has to go to fixing the roof, and they do not have the funds necessary to start up their after-school projects. Their director is a good friend of mine, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica, and an exceptionally motivated individual, and I know that your money will be well spent if you consider helping out their cause. Quality education is one of the most appalling deficits in developing countries, almost exclusively due to lack of resources. How can children learn to read if they don’t have any books? Think about how your life would have been limited if you had never been given those simple opportunities that we all take for granted as children. Any donation will help them a great deal, and could have a great effect on the quality of life for many children who otherwise could never have the opportunity to break out of the continually impoverishing cycle of underpaid child labor. Please consider helping out in any way that you can, by visiting their website, http://www.asociacionsolac.org/, giving a donation, and passing this email on to other friends and families.

Thank you all for your support, and continue reading below for more information!
Love,
Liz Cairns
____________________________________

We need your help!

Asociación SOLAC , a young non-profit in located in Lima, Peru, works on a number of grass-roots initiatives from human rights campaigns to community development projects. Our current project is focused on an impoverished community outside of Lima. This community is home to a number of migrant families from all over Peru. The main source of income for these families is the manufacturing of adobe bricks from the desert-like terrain on which they live. This back-breaking work nets families an average of $8 per 1000 bricks they are able to produce (see attached pics). Since these families are being paid per brick, as opposed to an hourly wage, many of the younger children are expected to work in the brick yard, taking away valuable study time and energy.

Asociación SOLAC is currently working through the small elementary school on small development projects that range from water purification to after-school tutoring and lunch program. After a community diagnosis was completed in 2005, it was determined that the school would see measurable improvements with the construction of a library and two study rooms. Unfortunately, just before its completion the roof collapsed due to bad luck with the weather. Now, we have a new engineer hired, and he's drawn up the designs for a new roof that will be both weather and theft resistant. This, of course, means more money. With our overly stretched budget, we are currently about $3000 short. Normally we would apply for grants through various NGOs and funds but in this case we don't have the months that are normally necessary the application process. How can you help? Go to http://www.asociacionsolac.org/ and follow the simple steps to make a donation through our Paypal account. The link is on the homepage after you toggle the language.

If you have any friends or family that may be interested in helping out, or would like more information, please feel free to contact me.

Regards,

Michael J. Quinzio and David Goodman
Associate Directors, Asociocion Solac

Lima, Peru
51-1-97499994
http://mensajes.claro.com.pe/
http://www.asociocionsolac.org/

One Year Wall

“It’s kind of like camping…”

That is what two of my most recent visitors have said about the way that I live. were champs during their visit to El Yayal – my mom shelled beans, used the latrine, ate the soup, and didn’t hear the mice at night! My dad ate everything that was given to him, including the coconut that my friend Eulises climbed up a tree to get for him. Of course, there had to be a pig loose in the back yard in the morning when Mom had to use the latrine, but she handled it remarkably well. I was very proud of both of them. I have realized in the last months how lucky I have been in my experience here. Upon reaching the 1-year mark, some of my fellow volunteers have decided they just couldn’t handle it anymore. The thought of yet another year of this life was just too much to take. One thing that volunteers say to each other is, “You can’t judge one volunteer’s experience against another,” which is funny, because that is mostly all that we do when we get together – compare horror stories. But really, there is no way to tell who will make it and who will throw in the towel, because it doesn’t have anything to do with your attitude, your willingness to work or your professional all alone with no one to answer to but abilities, though those things can help you get through some bad times. Really, you never know where that final crushing blow is going to come from and you can’t judge anyone when it gets someone, because most of the time it could just as easily have been you. Living here is hard, and Dominicans do a lot of things that don’t make much sense a lot of the time, and sometimes the two worlds collide in a way that makes it impossible to keep going. We didn’t join the Peace Corps because we thought it would be easy, and while we go through it together, we are still ourselves. So I am proud of Ambrosia and Lindsay for knowing when to say enough is enough, but I will miss them, and I hope that they both know how much they are loved and envied by a ragtag gang of crazy people still left on this silly little island. So good luck girls, and I hope you send us chocolate and trashy magazines.