<p>&nbsp;</p> <p>I&rsquo;m&nbsp;down here for six months taking part in the most well-structured and thoroughly thought-through&nbsp;program I could imagine. It provides non-religious, free education for kids who wouldn&rsquo;t be in school&nbsp;otherwise. It is not English lessons or indoctrination. We are teaching from course books they use in the&nbsp;public schools here. The school is called Escuelito Pajaro De Fuego and is in Andres Itzapa, a forty-five&nbsp;minute drive from Antigua, Guatemala. It is a very poor community with an abundance of smiling faces.&nbsp;Every day I make a world of difference to these kids who, if it weren&rsquo;t for this project, would be working&nbsp;the fields with their fathers.</p> <p>The school is one part of a closed cycle that addresses education, sustainable economy and use of&nbsp;natural resources. It also includes building efficient stoves to fight deforestation and a tree-planting&nbsp;program that provides fast-growing, slow-burning trees for free to the families and a source of income&nbsp;for the mothers.</p> <p>The school is the result of unbelievable effort fueled by monumental passion and belief and a world-&nbsp;spanning collection of volunteers, interns and coordinators. It is part of The Phoenix Project, the&nbsp;umbrella organization that runs similar projects in five Latin-American countries. Dom, the man who&nbsp;runs it all, has incredible compassion for each kid; he knows their names, their families, and how they&rsquo;re&nbsp;doing in school. This is one of two schools in Guatemala, let alone the four other countries stretching as&nbsp;far south as Ecuador. It is truly amazing what Dom (pictured with Profe Franky) has done here and plans&nbsp;to continue doing. The whole idea, as he explained to me, is that if it is not sustainable, there was never&nbsp;any point in putting the money there in the first place. Not a single penny goes to waste here (especially&nbsp;with a conversion of 8 Quetazales to 1 US dollar). 98% of the people paid by the Phoenix Project are&nbsp;local people, the rest are volunteers.</p> <p>To give you an idea of where your donation will go, until I brought in packs of pencils in my first week,&nbsp;the kids were using pencils mangled and broken, smashed and used down to as short as one inch. We&nbsp;have to share our classroom with another class and there are only half walls to divide our &ldquo;room&rdquo; from&nbsp;other classes. We buy all our own supplies: whiteboard markers, rulers, large paper for diagrams and&nbsp;posters, photocopies, everything. Just ONE DOLLAR would buy every kid in my class a new pencil (and&nbsp;that is not an exaggeration!)</p> <p>We are also in desperate need of help for Honduras, where it is all the more important for the kids to&nbsp;stay in school. There, the community lives off one harvest of coffee for the whole year. I have yet to see&nbsp;the project in Honduras, but the school I am at now in Guatemala is, without a doubt, one of the two&nbsp;most well off projects down here. When I get to Honduras, I will update about how it is there.</p> <p>Thanks for reading. Please give anything you can and pass this page on to everyone you know. If you&nbsp;have any fundraising ideas, don&rsquo;t hesitate to go for it! Get in touch with me on my Facebook page to&nbsp;hear more about it or chit chat about fundraising ideas.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>