Merry Christmas and Congratulations to Our New Graduates!

Earlier this month was high school graduation for our students in Nicaragua.  The photos began to stream in from Emilse as the students started their march to the school, I couldn’t help but feel proud of all the hard work that had gone into this moment.  Proud of the students, proud of the parents, and very proud of our staff – both past and present.

As I saw photos of Francis come through I was immediately taken back to when we first met Francis and heard her story.  Born and raised in a remote village 30 minutes away from Empalme, she has triumphed through extreme odds.  Not only living in extreme conditions, she was medically challenged and born with her intestines outside of her body.  Enduring multiple surgeries throughout her childhood she has always been driven to succeed and when we accepted her into our program we knew we had something special.  Francis is an exemplary student and has been a very positive addition to our program.  We’ve featured her and her story in our newsletter before, she continues to be a star for our Foundation.

Francis wants to go on to university and become a teacher.  She has been studying very hard with our tutors to prepare for her entrance exam into university and we’re excited for her results sometime in January.

Your support has helped Francis, and students like Francis, to achieve their dreams of a better education.  Our program is unique in these parts of Nicaragua, and our results are showing us that we are on the right track.

Thank you for your support this year.  Many of you are “gifting” scholarships as Christmas gifts to family members – a very unique and heartfelt gift.  The yearly gift of education for a high school student is $350 and the gift of a university education is $975 per year.

Merry Christmas to all – we have all had a very blessed year.

Jake