End of Summer Camp & Scholarships for the New School Year

On August 2nd, we finished our third annual English immersion summer camp here in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. It lasted 6 weeks and this summer 55 campers participated! We added a new group for youth ages 15 to early 20s. We had cut off campers at 14 in the past, but there was an overwhelming interest of this group, so we added the group and called them Watermelons, in addition to our other 5 fruit groups.

We continued with the four stations - Story, Arts & Crafts, Songs, and Active Games. 10 volunteers, all from the US, ran the camp, in collaboration with our Haitian teachers. 5 counselors were here throughout the entire summer, which created lots of consistency, and 3 counselors were returners from last year, which strengthened our program as well.

Also, as a surprise to all of us, we moved into a new and improved building on our last week, complete with a playground!

After camp, it was time to prepare for the start of the school year. We continued our three scholarships from last year. Freddy Jean Piet enters into his second year studying Modern Languages at the University of OyM. Eriverto Osvaldo has moved onto 6th grade at Sueno de Los Ninos private school. And Miguelina Joseph graduated from 7th grade at Sueno de Los Ninos, so she moved onto a new school for 8th grade and then high school. This school, Santa Rosa de la Lima, is one of the best private schools in the city, and we are proud that she is able to attend. She is loving it so far!

Oh, I almost forgot, there was a special scholarship set up this year for Eriverto's younger sister Aniverca who has cerebral palsy and has never gone to school before this year, just one summer of summer camp. She was registered in 1st grade at Sueno de Los Ninos, but unfortunately, the teacher was unable to continue with her integrated into the class, although they do have one student with cerebral palsy, but he appears to be more accustomed to going to school and working in a classroom. So the plan is to attempt to place her in a special education school, at least for a few years, if the special scholarship continues, and then attempt to integrate her again.

Thank you for your continued support! Together, we are truly changing lives and working for a better future.

Summer English Camp Starts Tomorrow!!

Summer camp t-shirt design. T-shirts donated by Atlanta printing company owned by the husband of one volunteer.

Summer camp starts tomorrow, Monday, June 24th, but in a different area of town than in the past two years. We are running the camp in our grassroots school in the community of Padre Granero. The camp will run until Friday, Aug. 2nd.

In the past years, we charged a fee for sponsored campers or registered campers to attend camp. We mainly did this because the building we rented was quite expensive, to cover transportation, as well as other odds and ends. This year, since we are doing the camp in an already existing school building, we are not charging the camp fee, but the biggest expense we have to cover is the transportation. It comes out to about $8 per week, per camper. We will bus in 5 campers from the community of Los Dominguez (Eriverto, Miguelina, Milena, Enelbi, and Miguel Angel), and 5 campers from our grassroots school in Muñoz, who will ride with the volunteers each morning. If you are a native English speaker in the Puerto Plata area and would like to help out with camp this summer, please e-mail cambia.mis.estrellas@gmail.com.

We want to invite you to sponsor one of these campers for their six weeks at camp, or to make a donation to the Change My Stars fund in general, which will go toward summer camp or toward the scholarship funds which are ongoing. Stay tuned for weekly updates and pictures!

Family of 4 Kids in Need of Sponsorship

This is a picture of a family of four children who we hope to get sponsored for our 2012 English Immersion Camp. You may notice that there are more than four children in this photo, along with their grandmother. The two two-year-olds are their cousins and the little boy in red being hugged up front is a neighbor. The other four are siblings.


In the back right in blue is the oldest, Miguel Angel. He is 11 years old. Then the boy in a red soccer jersey in the front right is Eduardo who is 9 years old. Shantal is to the left of Eduardo and is 7 years old. Then Shanel is to the left of Shantal, wearing a white headband and holding her cousin Wendely. Shanel is the youngest sibling and is 6 years old.


The kids live with their grandmother. Their mother does not live far and pops in occasionally but quite frankly is not very responsible or interested in raising them. Their father(s) is/are absent. Their grandmother works very hard and raises them in a strict manner. They are all four extremely fun-loving, healthy, athletic kids. They could use support in their education and would highly benefit from extra-curricular activities.


These kids are determined as perfect candidates to be sponsored to go to camp out of a pool of potential others in the same neighborhood because first, they have the determined need to be sponsored, second, they show the great need for educational support and extra-curricular activities, third, their grandmother desires this for them, and fourth, they have responded very well to small neighborhood activities and slight behavioral corrections given.


This year camp registration is 100 pesos and then there is a weekly fee of 250 pesos. The weekly transportation fee for kids from this neighborhood is 300 pesos per child. Therefore, to sponsor each of these kids in USD, the costs are as follows:

1 week - $16.80

2 weeks - $30.84

3 weeks - $45.00

4 weeks - $59.13

5 weeks - $73.26

6 weeks - $87.40

**Our apologies for a previous mistake that said $50 could send a child to camp. We made a mistake in calculation, only including one week of transportation costs. This is the correct cost. 

You can sponsor by sending a check to:

Project Esperanza

1291 Valley Mill Rd. 

Winchester, VA 22602

or by donating on PayPal. If you donate on PayPal, please add an additional 2.5% to your donation because that is what the PayPal fee is. Please help us send these kids to camp! We think it will be a huge encouragement for them in their difficult lives. Thank you! 

Donation Matched by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

We are proud to announce that recent donations made toward the Change My Stars Scholarship Fund used to send two kids to private school this year was tripled by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Mellon Foundation, therefore, donated a total of $2,040 to Project Esperanza. Thank you! 


Since these funds were created through the Change My Stars program, they will go back into the program through paying rent for the building used and covering some other similar costs. We would love to be able to use the funds to create scholarships for more children but we must maintain our basic expenses first so that the program can continue! 

Camp: Week 5

This week at camp was very emotional! The counselors tried their best to keep up the camp structure, but it was a little tricky when a different counselor was leaving every day.

Like last week, the counselors used as much English as possible to direct activities. Directions were explained in English first, and then translated into Spanish for better clarification. There was also more pressure on the students to use English, like reinforcing the use of “please” and “thank you” and helping them communicate their desires (such as “I want water”) in English.

In song time, the students reviewed some of the older songs like The Wheels on the Bus and Old MacDonald, and enjoyed a CD one of the counselors brought that they could sing along to. The last few days a jump rope was brought in and the students were taught Cinderella:

Cinderella

Dressed in yellow

Went upstairs

To kiss a fellow

Made a mistake

And kissed a snake!

How many doctors

Did it take?

1,2,3,4….

The students had a lot of fun with the song, and were especially amused at it when translated into Spanish. After repeating the song many times, students challenged each other to see who could get the most doctors to help Cinderella. They loved this so much they also continued it during break time!

Another fun game we played was Mentira, which is just the name the counselors gave to the common card game in America, BS. This gave the students a good opportunity to review their numbers and colors, as well as learn the new shapes, words for King and Queen, and phrases such as “your turn”.

The final day of camp was a cause for celebration! Not only was it the last day, but it was also Ilayas’ birthday! (Ilayas is the son of Project Esperanza’s director, Caitlin.) The counselors (only two now!) decided to have a World Awareness Day, where first we showed the students a map of the world, and asked them to name different countries in each continent. We also asked them what kinds of animals lived where (ex: Australia- kangaroos, Africa- lions, Antarctica- penguins) and facts about the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

To celebrate America (where both counselors were from), the students made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and drank hot cocoa! Some students were reluctant at first to combine, what was to them, such a strange combination but it turned out to be a hit, and many students had multiple sandwiches.

Finally, one of the counselors led the students in a series of yoga poses. The students really enjoyed these exercises, and there were many bouts of laughter as the kids tried their best to do the movements where many times they ended up toppling over on the floor.

Afterwards, we did a small presentation of certificates, awarding campers for the completion of the program. We presented two star campers with scholarships that will allow them to attend private school this year! The day was completed with the students giving Ilayas his birthday presents and many tearful but loving goodbyes. It was a great way to end such a wonderful summer!

Camp: Week 4

This week at camp felt a little like review as two of the counselors were leaving mid-week for week 5.  The counselors' goal this week was to use as much English as possible around the campers and to be certain to have the campers speak in English as often as possible.  Overall, this week was by far the best for really being able to see the progress of the kids, especially those campers that had been with us from the beginning.


In story time, the campers were broken into different groups.  The younger kids read a Dora the Explorer book and LOVED it.  The book focused on short sentences and important phrases such as:


I need
I want
I have


All of the kids in this group created butterflies, just like the ones in the book to practice their colors and also talked a lot about the difference between clean and dirty as the puppy in the book needs to take a bath!


The older group of campers read a book about graduation.  They all learned many new words, as well as how important it is to learn to read before you can graduate!


In songs, the kids sang Old McDonald and learned how to say the names of different animals in English (as well as had A LOT of fun making the animal sounds at the top of their lungs- I think they heard us down the street).


In games, the kids wanted to play our version of musical chairs and duck, duck, goose (down, down, up) mostly, however, some of the students really got into coloring and continued practicing their English by coloring pages all about numbers and different vocabulary words. 



Friday of Week 4 at camp was very special, however, and all of the regular activities were put on hold so we were able to have a BABY SHOWER for Caitlin!  The kids loved wrapping the presents, decorating the school, and also practicing some English by creating cards for Caitlin!