Educate and Nourish 100 Dominican Children

This is a very special time at Abba's House Children's Center in Cienfuegos, Dominican Republic. The children are enjoying their first ever swingset. Thanks to a very generous donation, we are able to expand some of our feeding initiatives and physical education projects. To augment the one swingset, we are building a full playground area, something the children have never seen or experienced before. It will include additional swingsets, slides, climbing options, and structures to explore. Further, two of our oldest students are leading the others in physical education and health activities to include calisthenics and more structured games.

Each Thursday, our children now get to participate in arts and crafts activities including drawing, painting, and jewelry-making,

We hope to soon have Internet access at the Center and access to curricula in Spanish across all subject areas. We have set the goal of obtaining a set of 50 iPads.

Children are enjoying the books in the library added in December, and are making book reports and giving presentations on those reports.

We are thankful for our partners in this work who love our children from afar. Thank you seems inadequate. The children send their love.

The children are continuing to enjoy spending time at their school. This month, many educational items were purchased and delivered to the school to include children's books, scissors, glue, crayons, and toys such as balls, jump ropes, and gloves. Math and science tools were also purchased and delivered. We are now serving 125 children from 76 families in the very poorest region of the Dominican Republic: Cienfuegos. Our children are learning personal hygiene, reading, writing, and mathematics. This week, they worked to make jewelry: bracelets, necklaces, and rings with pony beads. The children help to keep the school clean by sweeping and mopping the floors.

We continue to purchase items as needed for the Center. In September, we received one $1000 donation, which went toward erecting lighting around the external perimeter of the center as a security measure. Smaller gifts received when toward food purchases for feeding our children. We continue to add to our educational program. The field coordinator will be visiting the Center in December, 2021. She will bring several teaching items including children's books, musical instruments, math manipulatives, science center items, playground equipment, expo markers, crayons, construction paper, scissors, small games, a microscope, an interactive calendar, bulletin board decor, and more and will present a pedagogical conference in science and mathematics for the tutors at the Center and area teachers.

Children at Abba's House Children's Center are continuing to make use of the items purchased for their school during the GlobalGiving iniative. Each day, the older students spend one hour in the new library reading or watching educational videos; all books, television, tables, and chairs were purchased via GlobalGiving funds. 

At this time, the Center is testing the oldest students for their progress across several academic areas to include mathematics, natural sciences, language, writing, and social responsibilities. To do this most effectively, students are seated in their new desks provided by donors via GlobalGiving. Our students at the Center are served until age 16, when they are tested for progress and then participate in a graduation ceremony.

The cost of food has skyrocketed in the Dominican Republic, like it has in many other places across the world, but here in Cienfuegos, it has meant that many do not receive meals for several days of the month. To counteract this food shortage, the Center  purchases and delivers extra food boxes for those families whose children attend the Center and who are in greatest need.

For the first time ever in Cienfuegos, the Center has an area on the second floor where all villagers (whether associated with the Center or not) can seek health/medical treatment with no cost. In addition, individual donors are currently funding medicines for villagers until the state can begin to provide free medications to all via the Center.

The Center continues to help families of their children with housing improvements. One recet family, consisting of a mother and her two children, lost their rented home and were homeless. The Center intervened, found them another home, and paid their rent for an entire year. Most recently, one of our families received a new concrete floor to replace their dirt floor,

Dear donors:

Thank you for radically changing the landscape at Abba’s House Children’s Center (AHCC) in the Dominican Republic with your donations. We were able to create a learning environment in AHCC that has never existed before. The children watched in wonder as their Center evolved and became a school. And when the desks arrived, the children could not contain their excitement! For the first time, the children at AHCC had access to books…over 1000 books where previously, not one book could be found, and had real school desks instead of small plastic chairs.  Each day, the children receive one hour of reading time in their library and for those who cannot read yet, curricular materials for teaching reading are now utilized by the AHCC tutors to help move the non-reading children toward literacy. Can you see the pride in the children’s faces? YOU did this!

Thank you,

Jose Rodriguez, Director

Sandy Watson, Field Coordinator

AHCC Children and Tutors