Holy Cross Anglican School

Dear Friends, Please take a few minutes (actually six!) to download and watch this video. It was lovingly prepared by video journalist, Travis Mathews, at no cost to the school. Travis did an incredible job of documenting the struggles of the people who live in San Mateo and the children who attend Holy Cross. Many thanks to Travis and to each of you who support this ministry with your prayers and financial contributions. Blessings, Francis

Can you imagine life without the bare necessities such as full running water, proper plumbing and in some cases electricity?

What if your yard was continuously soaking wet with unsanitary water and your kids had no where to play?

San Mateo is an area in crisis with over 200 families living there in the above mentioned conditions for 10 years. San Mateo needs major help to turn it into a safe clean place for these people to live. The town Council has pledged 75,000 BZD to help get this project underway - it will take a lot more money and manpower to undo the last 10 years and turn the neighborhood around. If you would like to help raise money for landfill for the people of San Mateo please contact me via email in tacogirlblog profile to find out how you can help.

According to the student demographics records from the school, 117 kids of the 500 attending Holy Cross are from the area of San Mateo attend Holy Cross School - most from Belize and a few are from Guatemala. San Mateo is the reason Holy Cross School opened up to help give a lifeline to these families and offers the kids a safe place to be that is close to home. 

In addition to a high quality education, the school provides these kids with healthy food, dental care and there will soon be a much needed counseling center to deal with domestic issues and a health post to address basic medical needs of the community.    

Please check out these other posts on blog action day tacogirl, Life's a Beach, Carbunkle Trumpet, Island Life and 88 Ways to Do Something About Poverty.

Welcome home

Waterlogged 

Yards are all wet

No where to play in the neighborhood 

Not a nice place to live in Rainy season

The advisory board meeting went well this morning. One of the main goals is to get the parents more involved and further the community oriented direction of the school.

Holy Cross School is taking a holistic approach and recognizes that aside from the kids education, the needs of the community are just as important to create a well balanced enviornment.  

The new school library should be done within the next month and much needed counselling center open in January.  A volunteer from the states is taking a 4 month sabbaticle to come and  do training so that there will be an effective councillor available within the community who is able to deal with domestic issues.

A church in Newfoundland has volunteered to raise the funds needed to open a health post so that people can get affordable treatment closer to home and on weekends if need be. This is another big step in helping the community of San Mateo and surrounding area. 

Holy Cross has made available scholarships to all senior students so they were able to go onto high school this year and not have to worry about costs. In exchange for scholarships the students are required to work 1/2 day on weekends - this work consists of computer lab training and learning computer repairs so that the kids are well skilled in this area when they enter the work world.

Pictures from this mornings meeting, Independence Day Parade, Fishing tournament and first computer class.

Fishing tournament

Fishing

Holy Cross student fishing

Holy Cross student fishing

Tired boys

First computer class

Higher learning

Kids getting a chance to become computer savvy

Learning in the computer lab