Archive for June, 2013
22 June 2013
When we say we work in “remote schools” we’re not joking!
This year’s extra long and wet rainy season has made it hard to get into the remote villages in Timor where Spend it Well works.
Agostinho took this 15 second video on a recent trip. This river was just one of several they had to cross. They did get to Baguio – the first car to do so since the wet season.
Trip to Baguio
project: Lequeracabu'u East Timor, Lospalos East Timor, Macalaco East Timor, Maucale East Timor, OSTICO EAST TIMOR
06 June 2013
The Best Part of a School Project
One of my favourite parts of a Spend it Well school project takes place long before the first sod is turned. Once we decide to build a new school, I take the first photos I have from that school and label them all “Before”. There’s something pretty amazing about knowing that within a few months, those appalling photos of a broken down shack of a school will be followed by “After” photos of a school building fit for a proper education.
The good news is that my photos of Ossolugo school have now been appropriately labelled and we are about to start our project there. Ossolugo school is a secondary school where the children from Macalaco and Festau schools (which we built over the last few years) go when they graduate. But at the moment the school is little more than a shack with dirt floors and is totally unusable during the wet season – this means many children have to board in Baucau often in very bad circumstances, and others simply don’t go to school at all. We have finalised a contract to build a 4 room (3 classrooms and a teacher’s room) semi-permanent building at Ossolugo school for US$39,000. We’re hopeful of starting the work very soon and having it finished within the short window before the wet season makes the village inaccessible again.
  
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