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| This is an adult education class on beauty salon skills. We had a project that helped this program. |
Church Leader takes us to visit a possible project
For the second type of projects, each humanitarian couple is allowed a certain amount of money every year to use for local projects that meet specific community needs. As long as the couple follows the general guidelines, they are free to search for any opportunity to help the local area. And that search often is aided by members of the Church who know of needs in their community. Below are 2 sisters in our branch who took us to many different schools, nursing homes and jardins that could benefit from humanitarian projects. Several projects were the result of this help.
Briefly, the general guidelines are:
1. The project is done with a non-profit partner. It can be a government agency or a NGO (non-government agency). We don’t work directly with individuals, though we enjoy meeting the individuals that the partner serves.
2. The purpose of the project is to help the partner become more self sufficient to serve the community, and/or the people served by the partner in the community are better able to care for themselves.
3. The cost per beneficiary is to be $20 or less.
4. Generally, day to day or consumable costs are not provided in the project.
One important principle we always need to keep in mind is the value of each individual. Truly, ‘the worth of souls is great in the sight of God.’ (D&C 18:10) Though we work with partners, spend lots of money, walk to the partner’s office to discuss the project and do all the myriad of chores required for each project, the most important part is each person that is blessed by our work.
When a couple finds a need that fits the guidelines and they feel this is a project to do, they write up an application on the internet-based program of the Church whose acronym is “CHaS.” Here we describe the project, its purpose and objectives, and develop a budget. We then send it to the European area welfare specialist (another missionary couple) who then takes it to the bi-monthly approval meeting. If they feel it follows the guidelines, they approve the project and the couple can then start the project (usually that means spending money!!)
Below, are some of the smaller, area projects that we have done. We have enjoyed this part of our work very much. It gets you right down in the community!
Here is a map of Cape Verde so you can see where these different projects are.
(Map courtesy of Wikipedia.com)
Educational Equipment for the Blind
Praia, Santiago
Partner: ADEVIC - Association of the Visually Handicapped of Cape Verde, approved in October, 2012.
These are the key people in this organization, of which 3 of the 5 are blind themselves.
This is a national organization, but our project was to help the school for the blind that they administer in Praia. They serve people of all ages, from 10-12 years old to 70. The school is a day class and they provide transportation to get the students to and from class.
Basically, you can’t buy any blind equipment in Cape Verde. We generally ask the partner organization to find a vendor for their requests. However, with many of the leadership blind themselves, it was hard for them to do the internet searches. We finally decided we needed to take that role if we wanted to submit this project. We also thank Elizabeth who did research for us on where to purchase the equipment that was needed and how much it would cost.
The first order was for Perkins Braille Writers. We found a company in England that had a good price on refurbished writers and participated in a program where equipment for the blind is shipped free of charge. Shipping can be very expensive, so this was a great help. We able to purchase 5 refurbished machines for the price of 1 new one. They were happy with that!
Some Braille writers in use.
The next piece of the order was for Braille punch writers (pautas in Portuguese) and speaking calculators. The English company, for some reason, didn’t stock Portuguese speaking calculators. They also didn’t have the requested size of the punch writers. So, we ordered them from a Company in Portugal and as miracles would happen, a member of the church here was going to Lisbon on Church business and he brought all the calculators and pautas to Mindelo in his suitcase – for free! We then carried them in our suitcase to Praia.
Here is a student trying out the new Portuguese speaking calculators.
Students feeling out the new pautas!
The teachers, blind themselves, are trying out pautas also.
The final piece of the project was ordering again from our English source some Braille writing paper and some math Cubarithm’s. Below is a picture of one. They hadn’t yet arrived when we visited last and so do not have a picture of our delivery. But this is what we ordered!!
The top of the cubes have Braille dots for numbers. And you arrange the cubes for whatever arithmetic problems you want to solve.
CASA DA CRIANÇA
Mindelo, São Vicente
Project was approved in November 2011. Casa da Criança is a kindergarten serving many children ages 3-5. It is a public school, and like other public schools, it is difficult to maintain the facilities. The roof over the entrance way leaked terribly. The classrooms needed paint as well as the outside play area.
Here is one of the classrooms that needed to be painted. Aren’t the kids cute!! All kindergartens (Jardins, in Portuguese) wear a gingham Bata for a uniform, both boys and girls. Each Jardim chooses its own color.
Here is a freshly painted room. The rooms looked much nicer and much cleaner and a better place to be.
Then the entrance way. The problem was the concrete roof that had cracked and was letting water in.
Here they are applying the sealing primer after making the needed repairs.
Here is the finished product.
Looks MUCH better.
And the rain stayed outside!
Finally the play court:
The bright red, high gloss paint that resists dirt was made twice as high as it was previously. The children do enjoy playing
Another small part of the project was to have a hygiene lesson given by some nursing students to the children followed by giving them an individualized hygiene kit.
Here ‘Flecha’ learns why it is important to wash your hands, take a bath and brush your teeth from his friend (and I don’t remember her name!).
Handing out hygiene kits
We had a little money left over in the project and asked the director of the school what she needed. What was most important was to put a water box on top of another school so they could have water at the school! Unfortunately, the cost was too much for our budget. But we agreed this was a very important need. So we applied for some more money through a supplemental request which was granted. I won’t add that picture. It is just a building with a big, concrete box on top.
And if you want a hug, go to a Jardim!!
Mosteiros Special Education Workshop
Mosteiros, Fogo
Project was approved in October, 2012. We are waiting for one more piece to pay for so we can close the project.
Special Education is just beginning to be implemented in Cape Verde. In the past, the students that didn’t progress in their schooling dropped out, perhaps after only getting to the 3rd year. Basically, you keep repeating a grade until you pass or you get too old and are dropped from the school system. And if you have a problem like being blind or deaf or other type of handicap, you often just didn’t go to school. The next 3 projects we describe were with different Special Education programs.
Here is a view of Mosteiros as we are climbing up the steep hill. The light lime green building is the pensão where we stay when we go to Mosteiros. We usually eat our meals there too and the cook does fish wonderfully well! The building across the street, a brownish one with rounded corners is the Cámara, the local government building.
Mosteiros is on the opposite end of Fogo from the main city of São Filipe. If you don’t have a car, you have to take the hiace which only leaves from São Filipe around noon. And if you want to go back to São Filipe, the hiace leaves at 6:00 a.m. (yes, that is morning!!) One morning as we were leaving Mosteiros, we had to leave the hotel before anyone woke up and we left without paying!! We did take care of it, but we are careful now to pay for our hotel the night before.
And a view from sea level!
The Mosteiros school district asked if we would finance a Special Education workshop that would instruct teachers on visual aids that would help those students learn. And the workshop would include a hands-on session for the teachers to make some of the teaching aids. The hope was that then they could go back to their school, teach the other teachers, and make more aids as they needed them.
30 teachers gathered at the end of November. The assessment of the school district: better than they had ever hoped!
Then the instruction!!
And now the fun part!!!
Here are some of the projects. Although we supplied many materials, you can see the normal Cape Verdean way of recycling common household items like empty yogurt cups, egg cartons, cups, cardboard boxes, etc.
And, finally, part of the pay off for us:
We visited a school in Relva which had sent a teacher to the conference. She came home and made an alphabet matching game for EVERY student in her class (the plastic bags that each students has on their desk)! Our goal of helping our partners to be better able to serve their people was clearly met!
Sal Sepcial Education
Espargos, Sal
Project was approved in December, 2012. Because the final workshop will be in the Fall, 2013, we won’t actually close the project.
On Sal, the Special Education Director is also the only Special Education teacher on the island!! She has a classroom in a school in Espargos, and the children rotate through her class from the other regular classes. She needed help with upgrading her room with windows that would keep the dust and rain out to protect the equipment, a repaired and repainted floor to make the room look and function better and a new printer and computer network. She also wanted to better serve the needs of deaf students with a workshop for teachers, families and friends on Portuguese sign language. Also, as part of the project, she will be conducting a general special education workshop next Fall. She has been a wonderful partner, always answering our emails quickly and coordinating all the work in her classroom.
Participants in the sign language class. Our partner reported that after the week long course, one teacher began really communicating with the deaf student in her class.
A larger view of the class. The young woman in the front right wanted to take the class so she could ‘talk’ to her friend.
We spent an hour one day in her class and enjoyed doing some math activities with the children. You can see the nice, clean window in the top right.
Note: An interesting part of this project is the ‘long distance’ factor. We only visited Sal twice: once discover the need and once during the project when no work was currently being done. All applications, requests, discussion, payment of vendors etc. was done online. We have to have a very high level of trust in our partners to do these types of projects. She actually reimbursed us $25 that we had overpaid on one bill. We would never have known, if she hadn’t been honest!
São Filipe Special Education
São Filipe, Fogo
Project approved April 2012.
Red Cross President, Special Ed Coordinator and Artist with daughter
This was actually our first Special Education project. We learned about the challenges of Special Education in Cape Verde from the local Red Cross president, who is also the coordinator for Special Education in São Filipe as well as a Spec. Ed teacher and very accomplished artist. Here is a piece he was working on in his home.
His request was for equipment and learning games.
I enjoyed the visit to the Special Ed Recourse room. Here a deaf student is trying to teach me to ‘say’ my name in sign language. It’s as hard to learn as Portuguese!
A teacher is using one of the new educational games to help this student understand math.
A final piece (with money that hadn’t been used on the major part of the project), was to put in a secure door to protect the equipment from theft. The resource program moved to another school and while in general it was safer, the director felt it better to add a secure door.
The fabricator and the door he welded together!
As you can see, one major emphasis we have had in our Area Initiatives is education. Certainly an essential key to helping the people of Cape Verde become more self-sufficient is adequate education. They have made great strides in the past few years. We hope the small projects we have been privileged to participate in have helped!
