School Supplies

School supplies: need ‘em

One of our projects in Belize is to go into the classroom and help kids construct paragraphs and stories in English. The national language in Belize is English, but the majority of families speak Kriol or Spanish in the home. In fact, 70% of all Belizians are bilingual or trilingual. Our team leaders have been working with teachers to come up with a needs list and writing project that will help the kids learn about paragraph construction and grammar. As a team and individually, our goal is to model “proper” English and sentence structure through a written story demonstrating how we’ve seen God work in our lives (it’s a Catholic school). In turn, the kids will have an opportunity to think about and identify how they’ve seen God work in their lives and construct a similar story in English with individual help from members of our team. The project will hopefully provide a fun and unique way to learn and remember English on paper, which is important because the kids are required to pass an English test to continue beyond 8th grade. It’s also a good practice to stop for a second in an ordinary day, look for evidence of God in our own lives, and to share. Or write it down. Or both.

Also, while part of our team is in the classroom, another group will be providing general upkeep and maintenance on the school grounds, and others may be working on a similar “story” project with adults, some even parents of kids in the school.

The need list (and here’s where you come in) is simple: school supplies, paint supplies, infant clothing.

Each member of our team will be checking two luggage bags full of school supplies and project supplies (paint rollers, paintbrushes, etc.) and carrying-on our own personal items in a backpack. Ideally, we will have packed for ourselves WAGs (wear-and-gives) and will come home with little to nothing, including our actual physical luggage. The Cornelius Foundation makes trips to Belize two to three times a year, and on each trip they load suitcases and bags full of project supplies. The more bags available, the more supplies we can bring. The system works well and is cheaper than shipping, but creates a great need for permanent suitcases and luggage bags for the Foundation.

If you have the means and are looking for a way to contribute, we need 30 pieces of luggage with wheels (suitcases or duffel bags, new or used), pencils, erasers, loose-leaf paper, rulers, calculators, colored pencils, crayons, paint rollers, paintbrushes and infant clothing (anything under 2 yrs old). Any adult sized t-shirts or athletic shorts would be appreciated for the team to wear and donate.

Please e-mail me if you are able to provide for any of these needs: brkwilson@gmail.com

Thank you so much to those who have already contributed time, energy, money and prayers.

“The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose…”
1 Corinthians 3:8