A Very Busy Monday

What a productive day!!!

Our group was introduced to the children of St. Clare School today at their 7:50am assembly. It is a special multi-cultural day and the children sang an indigenous language and danced to the song.

Introduction



The Team

Dancers and Singers

Today, May 25, was a special day for the Kindergarteners (3, 4 and 5 year olds). The children had lots of fun activities... music and dance, chicken kabobs, cake, and drink. Each child received a bag with favors. You could tell that the girls really loved dancing. Look at the faces of those boys! I think they'd rather be outside playing in the sand!

3-year-old Girls Dancing

Boys Looking On

I can Dance!

Three-year-old Kindergarten Party

We  went to a PRONOEI school today. PRONOEI is a government-funded pre-school of 58 children, run by the School Sisters of St. Francis. Even though its a public school, many religious icons are visible at the school. The neighborhood surrounding this PRONOEI school is very poor. Last year, the municipality made electricity available to this community. However, there is no running water.

Building in Center is a Community Tank of Water

Down each street, there are approximately 15 families that share a community water tank. The water is delivered to this community tank every couple of weeks. Each family buys approximately seven, five-gallon buckets of water daily. The daily water costs them one sol or 32 cents.

The water is chlorinated. However, the water has a good chance of becoming contaminated. It's delivered in a tank on the truck. It's very windy and sand blows everywhere. There's dog and cat feces everywhere.  Most families boil their drinking water with gas or coal. The gas or coal costs them money.We were told that some people don't boil the water because they don't have the money for fuel.  The people in this area barely make ends meet.

St. Paul Parish in Genesee Depot, WI donated 25 systems. THANKS DONORS of St. Paul Parish!. The School Sisters of St. Francis (SSSF) selected 20 families, from this area, to use the new water purification systems. Two systems are going to be used by the children of the PRONOEI school.

The moms met with our team  after school so that they could be trained on how to use the water purification system. Doug Nelson trained them in setting up the system and how to clean the Berkley elements. We are cautiously optimistic that they will use them.  They all felt they would be easy to use. Thanks to Doug for doing such an excellent job training them. They moms all felt that this system will save them lots of money because they don't have to buy coal or gas to boil their water. Only time will tell.