Project Amigo Update - May 2
Posted by Tonya Gamble
on Apr 6, 2011
Here is the latest info on our 2011 international service project - if you have signed up for Project Amigo make sure you read this through completely.
Project Amigo planning is coming along well. The grant application is getting close to being finished and we have heard that the district has money, hopefully it will sail through the process smoothly.
Susan Hill, one of Project Amigo's founders sent us the specifics of our work week the other day. We will provide thirteen mini-libraries to poor rural schools in the Armeria, Minatitlan and Manzanillo counties. Each mini-library provides 200 children's books appropriate for ages kindergarten to sixth grade.
Our work is important because children in the rural schools which will be served by this project do not have access to children's books. The state education department is beginning to provide a few books to some poor rural schools, but not nearly enough to supply the demand. To encourage the joy of reading, and hence to improve literacy and communications skills in the state of Colima, this project will serve between 60 and 545 children per recipient school. A bi-product of this project is children taking books home to share with parents and siblings - making the literacy outreach even larger.
To date, we have 15 people committed to attending our literacy work week from March 5-13, 2011. We need to have 20 people committed by July 1 and then we can still add people up to a total of 32.
If you have non-Rotarian friends who might be interested, feel free to invite them, we are not requiring that participants be Rotarians.
If you have signed up for this trip:
1. A $600 deposit per person is due by June 15. Make the check out to Eagle River Rotary Club and give it to Tonya.
2. We have decided that we will not be making group flight arrangements since many of us will not be flying straight there and/or back. Everyone will be responsible for making their own flight arrangements. Please use the guidelines below to make your travel arrangements.
3. Project Amigo is providing us with transportation to and from the airport and they have requested that we fly into either GDL (Guadalajara) or ZLO (Manzanillo). They'll pick us up at either airport.
4. They prefer afternoon arrival and departure times so they can avoid driving us in the dark. Both airports are 2.5 to 3 hours from Project Amigo. If that is a problem than you should schedule your incoming flight a day earlier and spend the night in a hotel right in the city you fly into.
5. Until we have 20 people our project is not viable, however, since the trip is during spring break you should make your travel arrangements as soon as you feel comfortable committing to the trip. Pete and I both believe that we will fill up the necessary 20 slots and we are going to start working very hard on that. I am going to make my family's travel arrangemens soon, and if for some reason the trip does not go through, which I don't believe will happen, but if it doesn't, we will then spend a week on vacation in Mexico!
-Tonya
Susan Hill, one of Project Amigo's founders sent us the specifics of our work week the other day. We will provide thirteen mini-libraries to poor rural schools in the Armeria, Minatitlan and Manzanillo counties. Each mini-library provides 200 children's books appropriate for ages kindergarten to sixth grade.
Our work is important because children in the rural schools which will be served by this project do not have access to children's books. The state education department is beginning to provide a few books to some poor rural schools, but not nearly enough to supply the demand. To encourage the joy of reading, and hence to improve literacy and communications skills in the state of Colima, this project will serve between 60 and 545 children per recipient school. A bi-product of this project is children taking books home to share with parents and siblings - making the literacy outreach even larger.
To date, we have 15 people committed to attending our literacy work week from March 5-13, 2011. We need to have 20 people committed by July 1 and then we can still add people up to a total of 32.
If you have non-Rotarian friends who might be interested, feel free to invite them, we are not requiring that participants be Rotarians.
If you have signed up for this trip:
1. A $600 deposit per person is due by June 15. Make the check out to Eagle River Rotary Club and give it to Tonya.
2. We have decided that we will not be making group flight arrangements since many of us will not be flying straight there and/or back. Everyone will be responsible for making their own flight arrangements. Please use the guidelines below to make your travel arrangements.
3. Project Amigo is providing us with transportation to and from the airport and they have requested that we fly into either GDL (Guadalajara) or ZLO (Manzanillo). They'll pick us up at either airport.
4. They prefer afternoon arrival and departure times so they can avoid driving us in the dark. Both airports are 2.5 to 3 hours from Project Amigo. If that is a problem than you should schedule your incoming flight a day earlier and spend the night in a hotel right in the city you fly into.
5. Until we have 20 people our project is not viable, however, since the trip is during spring break you should make your travel arrangements as soon as you feel comfortable committing to the trip. Pete and I both believe that we will fill up the necessary 20 slots and we are going to start working very hard on that. I am going to make my family's travel arrangemens soon, and if for some reason the trip does not go through, which I don't believe will happen, but if it doesn't, we will then spend a week on vacation in Mexico!
-Tonya