Woodville - March 2010

We have our location!!!

A community meeting was held the first week of March to discuss the future of Woodville, which included a discussion about the LIFE Center. The meeting was well-attended and Scott Yosko was particularly thrilled to see so many youth present and taking an active interest in the future of their home-town. The big news is that the LIFE Center Committee, together with the Community Foundation, decided on a location for the building!! And Judge Blanchette, representing the Community Foundation, signed an Ernest Money Contract on the property. The location selected is a 7-acre lot just south of Wal-Mart on Cobb Mill Road and is called "Shepherd's Place". It is a beautiful piece of property with plenty of pine trees and a creek on one side. It is located close to town and as everyone shops at the Wal-Mart, is convenient to the entire community! There are also an additional 50+ acres adjacent to the property that could be considered in the future for expansion.

This is a huge step! And this step, along with the feasibility study that is still underway, shows we are definitely moving forward!!

Roatan - March 2010

We just got back from a 2-week stay in Roatan. Some good friends, Giovanni and Judd, spent the first week there with us and we all stayed very busy! Giovanni brought down children’s clothes, toothbrushes and toothpaste that we hand-delivered with the Schulers to members of their congregation who are the poorest of the poor. They were all so grateful for the gift, and we were humbled and enriched by meeting every single one of them. Time was spent tutoring many of the children after school, helping them with math and English in particular. After tutoring they love to play Uno, and Mrs. Schuler awards the winner with a piece of cake – so the kids take it very seriously!


Our friends also took it upon themselves to fix the 15 bikes at the home, all of which were broken! The kids loved it and we never found them inside the house the rest of our time there... they were always out playing on their bikes!

We went back by the Alfreida Brooks school that we had visited before and checked out the security bars ALF helped purchase so the rooms could be locked up at night with no risk of their desks, books or supplies getting stolen. While there, we spoke to Darla, the young teacher we had met last September from the island of St. Helene. She had mentioned that the people on the north side of the island didn't have a school and were trying to build one, similar to Elfrieda Brooks, as a community school. We were very interested in finding out more to see if we could help. She arranged to have her dad pick us up in his boat and take us to the island to meet the people and learn what was going on.

The place they had been holding school through last year was no longer available to them, so until a new building can be constructed, they are having classes in this temporary shelter they have built. After meeting several of the community members and the two teachers, we agreed that we would help them build a school, but that their buy-in" (as we don't give away money without the other party having some skin in the game) is to clean up their community of all the trash. As we've seen in most of Roatan (except the tourist areas), the land and natural resources are not being respected and almost always consist of trash lining the beaches and common areas that the locals live in. They agreed. And so we are well underway to getting all the resources and labor needed to construct a solid school building, with much of the materials being donated 'at cost', and much of the work being done 'pro bono'. Our goal is to have the building finished by the end of summer.


Here is a picture of several of the beautiful people of St. Helene on the site where the permanent school building will be located. The project name we've come up with for this is "Top S.H.E.L.F." with the SHELF acronym standing for "St. Helene Education and Litter-Free" project. Check back later for more updates on this and all the other activities taking place in Roatan!