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Domingo asked if we could do more sponsorships. He said parents are constantly coming
and asking if we would help. He gave us an example of this. He said a man who has 8 children
has approached him 5 or 6 times. He works in construction and makes about Q50 per day. ($6.67)
All of his children do quite well in school and enjoy learning but next year two would be in
basica which would be quite expensive. I said we could probably take on one of these children.
Domingo is going to find out more about the family. We told Domingo that we would add 5
scholarship children which gives us a total of 15 next year in Santiago. Domingo does this
voluntarily and it is a tremendous amount of work. He is very good at keeping receipts and
records for all the expenses. Domingo was only able to go to 6th grade although he is very
bright so he wants to help the children in Santiago go to school. Domingo got his first pair
of shoes at 13. He got these when he had to quit school and go to Guatemala City to go to work.
He has a very long and painful story and has really done well. He had made a lot of healthy choices in life.
One of the needs that Domingo talked about was the typing that the students have to do. All of the
older students have to take a typing course and during and when the typing course is over the students
have to type all their papers. Many of the students don't have access to typewriters. They can't
use computers. The teachers insist on typewriters. We decided that Sharing the Dream would buy
3 typewriters and keep them at Domingo's. He would be in charge of lending these out to the students. He was going to
buy them tomorrow in the city. We thought this is also something we could
round up ..so if anyone close to Vermillion has an unused portable typewriter
that is in excellent condition, maybe we could have people bring them down as carry on luggage...
I think we should be able to find quite a few of these.
Domingo also headed up our reconstruction project for the homes that we redid in
Pachichaj. After Hurricane Stan most people concentrated on the people in Panabaj and other
parts of the area didn't get much attention. The temporary houses for the people in Panabaj
were constructed several months after Stan. They put the temporary houses in a very bad spot
and then they were going to construct permanent houses there. The houses were located close
to the mudslide and were quite
dangerous. The government finally realized this and now are putting houses
on the other side of town. Sharing the Dream with a lot of help from many people, did 18 homes
for families who didn't qualify under the government
resettlement program. I am enclosing some before and after photos so you
can see the big difference. Thank you to all who contributed to this massive project. It was
wonderful to see and the people are so happy to be
living in their new homes. There were 2 houses that still needed a bit of
work but Domingo said he had run out of money. It was around $500.00 so we gave him the money so he could finish it.
The next few hours we worked on bead orders and other business.
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