School Improvements

Ruben and his team have worked on a number of school improvement projects. The government and foreign-NGOs built a beautiful new elementary school building with lovely bathroom facilities. They failed to provide a well or other source of water for the school so Ruben and the community installed a water tank. They have also helped build and are continuing to improve the Dona Maria High School. From time to time GRACE Cares has collected school supplies and other necessities for the children. Shoes are always needed and at this time it would be great to obtain backpacks especially for the younger children. This is a great opportunity for a fundraising event for community groups.

Dona Maria High School

Students in the community could not afford transportation to the nearest high school. The community came together and built a basic school on donated land for high school age students and were able to get teachers assigned there. The school contained three classrooms with open walls, unpaved floors, and no bathroom. This made it very difficult for girls to attend school (boys were more comfortable with the woods) and class could not be held when it rained. Ruben and his team constructed an outhouse, have poured floors, and are currently building exterior walls.

In 2011 a fourth classroom was finished. The foundation had been built earliar but there was not enough money to build the roof, walls, or floor. Also in 2011, a concrete floor was poured in the third classroom.

Goals include:

• Fix the back classroom roof. It is leaking bad.
• Add a fifth classroom onto the back of the school. This will provide room for thirty more students who could not attend class this year because of a lack of space.
• adding exterior walls to the classrooms. The three existing classrooms are of different sizes. Enclosing them would cost $400, $600, and $700 US.
• A closet to store schools supplies and books at night
• Computers as most families do not have them at home
• To build a proper, concrete block, school with floors, walls, a permenant roof, and toilet facilities. This would cost about $14,000 and be able to fit all 150 students.

Some Past Drives

In 2011 supplies such as pastels, drawing paper, crayons, and colored pencils were collected by students from the Green MEadow Waldorf School.

In 2010 GRACE Cares and Phi ALpha Delta at Fordham Law School collected art supplies and funds to purchase more in the DR to start an art proram for children in the elementary school.

In 2008 shoes were collected.

In 2007 Pi Lambda Phi at UNC collected school supplies.

Back to Project Hearts DR

For more info on Hearts DR and their other projects please see www.heartsdr.com.