What An Amazing Experiment…!

I believe this to be a great time of the year in Copey. We are entering the final months of school and then summer time arrives for the Learning Center students.These students are having a fantastic year! Student enrollment has been high this year and I think the retention rate has remained high also…especially among the Anne G. Broady Scholarship Fund recipients.

The students are making great progress and there has been some very good highlights including Spelling Bee success and the surprise invitation to participate in The Nutcracker ballet. The Pen Pal Program is getting exceptionally high marks.

We have been treated with photos of the students throughout the year and it is a joy to see their smiles. It is also gratifying to know we contribute in some positive ways to the life they have today and the life hopefully they will have in the future. Here are the students in a Team Building Day exercise. Staff is working on helping the students improve their conscientiousness about how to treat their classmates and learning anti-bullying strategies. The day was filled with  team building exercises like the ones pictured.  They had to get the hoola hoop across the finish line without touching it with their hands.

This is our first year being closely involved with the Learning Center. As the author of this Blog, I receive weekly updates on the Learning Center and pass the info on to you in my Posts. Sharing the news with you is not only a commitment I feel but an honor since I know many of you trust me to represent you as a “Friend of Copey” in working with the Learning Center.

I hope each of us as “Friends of Copey” can appreciate what an amazing experiment this is and what a very special relationship we enjoy with the Copey community. The Board of Directors of the Learning Center have never met “Friends of Copey”. They hear about us from their staff, maybe read my Posts, and for sure watch very carefully our behavior. They are cautious and are expected to distrust us as we proclaim “we are here to help”. But to date, we have been all we say we are and each day our credibility grows and our partnership with the Learning Center gets stronger.

“Friends of Copey” may not understand or fully appreciate from this end what it may be like for a rural community to come to the realization there is a group of people, scattered in different parts of the world, unseen and without political interests and monetary gain, only interested in the betterment of their children. I often ponder what this must feel like to these folks in Copey…how bizarre this must feel to them. It is beyond comprehension for me.

We know there are worse conditions all over the world involving children that need support and help much greater than in Copey.  We can hardly watch or listen to the news without learning of new horrific events involving children. Most of the time we hear about these events and feel we have little we can do to help. Many times we just lose sight of the problem.

There are still 200 school girls missing in Nigeria and we no longer hear much about the children showing up at our borders in desperate need of help. There are reports of thousands of refugees including children dead or displaced at the hands of ISIS. By comparison, Copey seems very quiet and removed from such horror. But remember many of those children from Central America came from neighboring countries of Costa Rica and rural communities in all these countries have much in common when it comes to children.

I hope you are feeling really connected with this project. It is unique and we cannot predict what the challenges will be in the future. The success we realize today can become the model other interested supporters may consider and want to duplicate in other Copey type communities. Everything starts from someplace. I hope you continue to take a couple of minutes each week to read my Post. I hope you read some of the older Posts and see how we have progressed and evolved over the months.  If there is something more I can do to keep your interest, time, and support, please let me know.