Spend It Well » 2012

Archive for February, 2012

28 February 2012

Macalaco’s garden is off the mark

At the risk of boring you all, here are photos of more plants! These photos make me really happy because they show just what the villagers are able to do if they’re given the opportunity. Macalaco School has now joined Ostico and Maucale Schools in planting their school gardens with the $500 funding we gave them. Rather than provide the seeds and equipment, we allowed the villagers to decide how and what to spend the money on. Maclaco has planted corn, peanut, sweet potato and banana. It’s not much money, but to see fresh vegetables being grown, where previously there were none is a fantastic result. Spend it Well will keep funding these gardens if they are successful.

project: Lequeracabu'u East Timor, Macalaco East Timor, Maucale East Timor, OSTICO EAST TIMOR

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16 February 2012

Macalaco School in Action

While Macalaco’s new school building looked great at the opening ceremony, I always love seeing new classrooms actually being used by the kids. Agostinho visited all 4 Spend it Well schools last week and sent through some great photos from Macalaco of the kids in their new classrooms, using their new blackboards and sitting at their new desks!

project: Macalaco East Timor

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01 February 2012

Search for our next school starts

I am definitely best left at home when the investigative trips are made to decide on our next school projects. The Ministry of Education gives us the schools at the top of its “most desperate” list from which we choose our projects. Put me in any of those schools and I’ll decide that we absolutely have to help them out. But it’s actually not that simple. Need is only the starting point – we have to identify a school with a co-operative and energetic community and also one where the money we spend will have a significant effect on the school and the kids. That’s where Agostinho Soares, our Timorese project manager (in the stripy shirt) comes in. He visits the sites, talks to the community and its leaders and the teachers. He also works with the builders to produce good pricing – and monitors work once it has started. That process is underway now – more info soon.