September 26, 2016
Escuela Cooperativa San Pedro La Laguna
After John and I decided on San Pedro for more Spanish lessons, we began looking online for choices. There are a number of schools here in San Pedro, but how does one make a choice? Reviews are helpful, but how does one know the source? The young adults who are here as part of their travels may have an entirely different set of criteria for the school they select than John and I have.
Escuela Cooperativa is a true cooperative, started by Spanish language teachers over a decade ago and they all have a passion about giving back to their community. All of the fees paid go directly to the teachers, with no administrative fee being collected. Each student pays $25 that goes into a fund to help families marginalized through disabilities or severe economic hardship in the community. These are some of the things that John and I feel strongly about. Each week a family, that has been screened and selected by the teachers, receives a visit from the teachers and a few students, who chose to participate. The families are given basic supplies…such as rice, beans, eggs, sugar and soap.
The school has also started an ambitious program of building small, but sturdy, homes for the most needy of families. It is a real eye opener seeing how these truly impoverished family live…barely. The teachers receive recommendations for needy families and must screen and select what family will receive a home. It is an extremely difficult task for the teachers because there is so much need here.
Last Friday, John and I sat with Mynor, who is a director for the school, and he explained how the school is helping the community. We visited the four homes that have been built over the past years. The funding comes from student and general donations. We also saw where the next family to receive a home is currently living. Not to sound crass, but these families literally don’t have a pot to piss in. They go outside, in this urban area, to do their toilets. Hygiene is something the family would love to have, but without running water it is nearly impossible.
Mynor told us about a grandmother in one of the homes that the school has built, leaning against a post and crying when she was told that her family was going to get a new home. He worried that the news was upsetting to her, because she had lived there for so long. No, she was crying tears of joy.
I have only one picture for this entry. My last entry had a picture of a woman doing some laundry at the lake. Remember, all water runs downhill. The waste from the families with no inside plumbing runs into the lake. Moments before I got the picture of the laundry woman, she was stripped down, bathing in this lake.
Our lives are so full of comfort, prosperity and bounty. I consider it a blessing to have an opportunity to witness hardship. I hope all of us can remember what we have...and what so many others don't have.
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