Felcidades (Happiness)

I titled this blog post Happiness because several wonderful things have happened for our organization in the last month. As of today we got our nonprofit status and we officially became The Rural Education Advancement and Development Organization (READ). On Tuesday of this week we finalized the members for our July project trip, and we bought our plane tickets. In the next two months, myself along with my parents, and our team will be preparing to build our Regional Library in Ecuador. This will consist of raising money for books, making our work plan, and preparing for our children’s fair. Thankfully my parents are going down 2 weeks before our team arrives. During those two weeks they will begin to promote the children’s fair, get the necessary materials ready to build our library, and they will also higher people in the community to help us with the construction of the building. With my parents doing the prep work, it will help our team be super efficient when we arrive. It has been amazing and eye opening how supportive, kind, and willing to help, people are. I have a lot of ideas, and hope for the future of this organization. Please continue to support us by reading our website, allowing us to coming and speak at your church/ group/organization, donations, and encouraging thoughts and words. I want to close with a quote from Gandhi “be the change you wish to see in the world”

Gearing up for our July 2010 trip.

We are preparing for our 2010 summer trip. For this year’s team we currently have 9 members and a couple more in the works. This is super exciting.

In preparing for the trip our team is doing the following:
- Collecting school supplies
- Promoting Our Give a Book Program ($5 will buy a book for our library).
- We are also talking to local groups and churches and any that will listen about our vision/project.

Our current schedule for trip is as follows:
Schedule for the 2010 Ecuador Trip
July 2nd (Friday) – We will leave for Ecuador, arrive in Quito the capital city, and spend the night.
July 3rd (Saturday) – Head out to Macuchi, where we will be building the library and having the children’s fair. On the way, we will stop at a volcanic crater lake, and the local market.
July 4th (Sunday) - We will go to Lamana for market day,we will return to Macuchi and prepare items for the children’s fair.
July 5th- July 8th (Mon – Thurs) - * Work Days* Work on constructing the library.
July 9th (Friday) - The children’s fair will be held on this day. After the children’s fair we will leave for Quito and arrive around dinner time.
July 10th (Saturday) - Explore Quito, shop for souvenirs
July 11th (Sunday) - Return to the United States

Our Main goal for this trip is build the structure for the library and to promote our library, through home visits, school visits, and a children’s fair that will serve around 300 children. Building this library will not only help the people in this community advance their education, but it will also provide opportunities for them in the future.

We are so thankful for all the support, thoughts and prayers we are currently receiving!

Las Noticias del Projecto en Ecuador ( News on Project Ecuador )

In just four short months we will be taking our second mission trip to Ecuador. This time we will be working on building a community library. We are so excited about this! Currently we have a total of 10 people going on the trip. I am also happy to say that we have 3 people that went last year that are returning again this summer. Our goals for this trip will consist of building the library and holding a children’s fair in the community. We currently are collecting materials for the 3 local schools and raising money for books and educational materials to go in the library. We also have two important upcoming dates for fundraisers:
March 20th: We will be holding a yard sale at FUMC Waynesville. (If you have materials/goods that you would like to donate please contact me at cele.reyes@gmail.com)
May 7th: We will be holding a fundraising dinner at FUMC Waynesville.
Please remember if you are interested about our project feel free to contact us!

Happenings in December 2009

Lucas and I just got back from a productive and great trip. The main reason for our visit in December was to prepare for what the group will be doing this summer. We started off our trip by going to visit one of the best private schools in Quito. The school was named Albert Einstein and is a K-12 school. The monthly tuition for the school is 500-600 dollars per student. As we toured the school we saw all the great and wonderful things that it had to offer. During our walk through I just kept thinking about how different this school was from the rural schools in Macuchi, Pilalo, and La Esperanza. I also thought how lucky we are in the United States to have access to things such as a free education and public libraries, things that I often take forgranted. Touring this school gave Lucas and I some insight on how we would like the future library in Macuchi to be set up. After our visit Lucas and I headed out to one of the 300 sights that Compassion International has running in Ecuador. Compassion is a program that helps needy children in Ecuador and all around the world. Most of the children in this program are sponsored monthly. The sponsors pay 35 dollars a month. This money helps the children with several things. At this particular sight the children come 3 days a week after school from 2-5. During this time the children have a devotional, receive food, and a small mini lesson on things such as character education and good hygiene. It was very interesting to see how this program was set up. The next day Lucas and I headed out to Macuchi. Throughout the week we visited the 3 regional schools and checked on the progress of the building that was built in the summer of 2009 in Pilalo. Most importantly we held a community meeting to discuss a future library and a peace core volunteer. During the meeting the community was in agreement that a library is something that is truly needed now to help advance this community. The community and the community leaders all signed a document agreeing to give a plot of land that is 25 X 45 feet. Now that we officially have a plot of land we can continue with plans to construct a library in Macuchi in the summer of 2010. Our family is very excited about the future possibilities for this community. We truly appreciate your continuous support in this project. Thank you for your donations, thoughts and prayers, and continuing to check out the blog.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

December Trip

In just a few days Lucas and I will be heading to Ecuador. We are both really excited about all the things that we will be doing during our trip. This week I will be going to a scholastic warehouse book sale, I am hoping to pick up several books in Spanish to add to the library in Pilalo. Lucas will be arriving in Ecuador a few days ahead of me, during this time he will meeting with someone at the peace corp. office, and visiting some school libraries in the capital city. Once I arrive we will both head out to Pilalo/Macuchi area. While we are in the area we plan on doing several things. We will be having a community meeting to discuss the regional library. Lucas and I will visit all the schools and talk with the principals and teachers. During this visit we will be conducting survey’s to give us a better idea of what the school’s needs are. We will also be visiting the kids that are currently on the high school scholarship. Although this seems like a lot to accomplish in a week, we are both very determined and eager to get these things done. Thank you for continuing to support us in this adventure, we appreciate all the thoughts, prayers, and kind words. Lucas and I look forward to sharing our experience with you when we return to the states at the end of December.

Regional Library

We recently received an email from Eddie, the principal of the school in Macuchi, and Ricardo one of the brothers that works at the church in Pilalo. Pilalo is where the library is currently located. In their emails they both wrote how the library is being put to good use. The library is currently being used by three schools ( Macuchi, Pilalo, and Chaupi Cruz).  Eddie and Ricardo also expressed how much the children are enjoying reading the books and viewing the educational DVDs. As a 4th grade teacher I know how important it is to be able to read. Reading is something that shows up constantly in our day to day lives. Providing these instructive materials will help set these children up to be life long learners. Below are some pictures of the books that are being checked out and read from the educational library.

The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”

- Dr. Seuss, "I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!"