Food & fruit for primary schools in Latin America

I hope all is well with you. As 2022, our 20^th Anniversary, draws to a close it is worth reflecting on what has been a year of rebuilding after the pandemic with full classrooms and sharing with you our plans for 2023 and the years ahead.

Access to full-time education from primary school to university will always be our number one priority though we are also aware that in times of hardship, employment opportunities are scarce even with an education. The pandemic, the effects of climate change which for years have been plain to see where we work and the current cost of living crisis are prime examples of these additional real-life obstacles facing our communities who already live with extreme difficulties.

The implementation of sustainable family and community income plans is key to ensuring independent economic stability no matter how the macro environment is faring and, after education, will be a priority for our work over the coming years. As many of the plans are agriculture-based then this can provide sustainable food for the children and families. The other plans are product-based from which income can be used to buy food.

We have learned so much over the past twenty years in Latin America, the highs and the lows and we plan to use this extensive knowledge we have garnered to benefit not only the communities where we currently work though also to implement new projects in other communities. The goal is the same wherever: sustainable full education and economic security.

Looking forward to 2023 in Guatemala we plan to expand Plan Costura, our sewing business for single mothers. As all proceeds are shared between the mothers, they are able to provide for their children, especially with food and materials for primary school.

Full classes were held throughout the year for children from four rural Andean communities in Ecuador and we were able to celebrate full cultural celebrations with food for the first time since the pandemic including Pawkar Raymi (asking Pachamama – Mother Earth – for a good harvest), Fanesca over Easter, Mother’s Day, graduate trips in July, colada morada for Day of the Dead and of course, Christmas!

We were also able to restart the implementation of Plan Moo whereby we buy milking cows which are looked after by local families and the income generated by milk and future calves’ milk is shared between them and the school’s costs. Also there is daily milk for family consumption.

With restrictions being lifted in Perú due to the pandemic we were able to celebrate Mother’s Day as well as other cultural celebrations with food. Our plans for 2023 include expanding Plan Huerto to increase the school meals and help the local families. 

Thank you so much to you all for helping us get this far and we hope you will continue to support our work for years to come as we face the known and unknown issues facing Latin American communities now and in the future.

Have a fantastic 2023 and thank you all once again.

Cheers    

The first harvest in our fully-irrigated Plan Huerto is underway in Perú with the vegetables being used for meals for the children and the elderly. We are still in the trial period to find out which vegetables grow well in the desert conditions and have started hydroponic systems for herbs and strawberries. This is a major step forward for our projects in Perú, where we also provide daily fruit, and for the healthy diets of the children.

We have resumed purchasing cows in Plan Moo which will sustainably cover the teachers’ salaries in the coming years. The sales of milk will provide regular sustainable income for the school which will be used to cover local teachers' salaries and supplement the food programme. This month we will be refurbishing the school kitchen which has definitely seen better days!

This year The Phoenix Projects are celebrating twenty years in Latin America and thanks to you around five thousand children, teenagers and adults have been able to receive a quality education during this time in Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Perú and previously in Brazil, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

We have built schools, extra classrooms, kitchens and energy efficient stoves, provided employment for dozens of local people, planted hundreds of thousands of trees, distributed educational materials, daily meals and hundreds of tonnes of fruit and implemented sustainable income plans on an average annual budget of around £85,000/$100,000.

Additionally, over three hundred families have benefitted from the implementation of sustainable income plans including cows, chickens, weaving, vegetables and small businesses.

To celebrate our 20^th Anniversary we are launching this year’s Appeal today and all donations up to $50/£40 through this page will be matched at 50% by GlobalGiving between Monday 12th September - today - until Friday 16^th September. Larger donations can of course be made although the matching will only apply to the first $50/£40 and only once per individual donor.

We still have so much more we want to do over the coming years with the experience we have gained, including replicating the projects in other communities with sustainable plans covering running costs from the start.

Your continued support in helping to fund local teachers’ salaries and scholarships, school materials, food and sustainable income plans is as important now as it has been in the last twenty years.

We realise that times are uncertain though anything you can donate to the Appeal through this page this week to take advantage of the 50% matching will help us start the next twenty years in the best possible way!

Thank you so much in advance.    

With normal classes back up and running after more than two years in Perú we recently had a great visit from fifty students and five teachers from Impington Village College, Cambridge, UK and thanks to their brilliant fundraising through GlobalGiving we were able to start our first sustainable irrigated vegetable garden which will provide food for the children and local families over the coming years. We also started building a new kitchen (to provide full daily meals for the children) and storage room which will increase the size of the three classrooms (currently cooking and storage is in the actual classrooms) – it is due to finished this week! 

For the first time since 2019 we were able to celebrate Mother’s Day and Day of the Child in May with plenty of dance and food and this time we invited the grandparents to watch their grandchildren perform which was great to see.   

The school year drew to a close this month in Ecuador with all the students graduating or passing on to the next grade. Due to the recent social unrest and national strikes caused by rising living costs the local teachers were unable to travel up to the school for the last two weeks of term so between our local teachers who live in the communities themselves and another teacher who stayed up in the community for the duration of the exams, the students were able to successfully finish the year. As a graduation celebration we paid for the students to take a day out on Lake San Pablo and enjoy a hearty meal. We also celebrated Mother’s Day and Day of the child with plenty of dance and food. Over the coming months we plan to invest in more sustainable plans including Plan Moo and Plan Cuy to help to generate income for the schools and the families; something critical in this time of rising living costs.

The school year continues for all our college students in Honduras with mid-term exams completed. Work was also conducted on the sustainable income plans with smaller versions being started in the communities so the families can grow their own vegetables and generate income. With the global situation causing excessive increases in day-to-day basic living costs these plans will help the families ride the current storm now and into the future. We have seen other local organisations implement our sustainable plan ideas which is a great thing as our funding can only go a small way. By educating other organisations to do the same thing we are all fighting for the same cause which is sustainable education and income for all the families.

In Guatemala we plan to build a new sewing centre for the single mothers in the next couple of months as numbers increase which helps them generate income to be able to feed, clothe and educate their families. Whilst there is demand, donations permitting, we will aspire to do all we can do to help the local families generate their own income.

For all our donors who live in Ireland, Wales and England we are arranging some individual day fundraising hikes and events in September including Dublin on 17th, Kinsale on 19th, Anglesey on 22nd, Chester on 24^th and The Peak District on 26th. If you happen to be in the area and want to join us please do get in touch by replying to this email or heading to the website link at the bottom of this page. As we strive to regain our momentum and funding post-pandemic, fundraising events play such a key role so if you have any in mind, no matter how small or big, please do let us know and thank you so much.

We already have the dates for our major charity challenges in 2023 including The Lost City challenge in Colombia between 6-13^th May and the Inca Trail in Perú between 8-15^th July. If you are interested in either please do get in touch by replying to this email or following the 2023 Charity Challenges link at the bottom of the page.

Thank you all for your continued brilliant support, without which our work would be impossible. We realise the current cost of living crisis has added to the hardships of the past couple of years so everything you can continue to do to support our work is very much appreciated – thank you!

Cheers

Links:

• UK and Ireland September fundraising hikes
• Colombia and Peru Charity Challenges 2023

I hope all is well with you. To give us a huge boost this week (Monday 4^th to Friday 8^th April) GlobalGiving will be 50% matching all individual donations to this page of up to $50 which is a fantastic opportunity for the projects as we aim to recover from the past two years and build towards a better sustainable future. If you can it would be fantastic if you could donate this week and your donation will go even further.

With 2022 now three months old it is already very different to the previous two years with all the students back in the classroom finally. We are aiming to maintain all the classrooms secure for daily teaching with cleaning products available. Looking ahead donations permitting, whilst continuing to cover our daily costs of the projects, we aim to make a concerted effort to implement family sustainable income plans with small enterprises over the coming months. Thanks to your continued support we have managed to keep the projects going through these hard times and once again, with your donations, we hope to be in a position to move forwards with confidence – thank you!

Ecuador restarted the second half of the school year in January and we continue to provide a basic daily food programme. Pawker Raymi was celebrated asking Pachamama (Mother Earth) for a good growing season and harvest. Pampa mesa (community eating) was enjoyed as always! Perú finally got back into the classrooms at the end of March for the first time since December 2019 and student numbers have swelled as more families migrate from the altiplano and jungle to try and find work in Arequipa though end up in the pueblos jovenes on the outskirts of the city in the desert where we work. We will be restarting our daily fruit programme as well as pay for the gas to cook breakfast drinks.

In the next few months we hope to build school vegetable gardens for the daily food programme and also implement various family sustainable income plans to help with household costs.

All the best for April and thank you in advance for your continued support.

Cheers

As 2021 draws to a close we would like to thank first and foremost all our local teachers for continuing to teach the students to the best of their ability with the resources available, whether this was in limited classroom-based environments or heading out to their homes when they could to give out and collect homework and set topics in the students’ textbooks. Thank you also to everyone who has supported the projects this year in what has once again been a very difficult time all round.

We have managed to keep a basic food programme going in Ecuador this year when staggered classes have been held and also a community-wide Christmas celebration for the young to the old from four communities. We have also delivered food packages in Perú when we could. In 2022 we will be putting money into school vegetable gardens to provide regular produce for school meals which will be a bonus. 

Our first priority is obviously to keep the projects going and the students educated. Once this has been achieved we can start implementing more sustainable income plans with the families which will provide them, and the schools, with continued income into the future.

Thank you all once again for your continued support and all the best for 2022.

cheers