Empowerment International - December 2014 Electronic Newsletter 2 | Page 2
Changing Lives One Brick at a Time
In 2004, I was in Nicaragua, taking a
vacation from my high-tech job in the
U.S., and visiting our fledgling project
in Granada, Nicaragua. Though we
had been working in Costa Rica for six
years, this was our first distribution of
school supplies in Nicaragua.
Most children from this community were dropping out at grade three
after they
learned
to
read.
W h i l e
I felt a
strong determination and
calling to
help these
children
and their
families
improve their lives, it still seemed impossible on that day 10 years ago to
actually envision these kids graduating
from school.
Rome was not built in a day, but they
were laying bricks every hour.
“Rome was
not built in a
day, but they
were laying
bricks every
hour.”
That’s what we have been doing in
Nicaragua for the past 10 years - laying
our daily bricks. It is a labor of love and
perseverance, not just by myself, but by
our local team, dedicated volunteers
and generous donors. Together we have
laid a foundation in the community to
enable these kids to succeed. The benefits from our building efforts are becoming clear as it is now almost routine
for our children to successfully progress
through all of primary and secondary
school. Further, we now have technical
school and university graduates, which
was absolutely unheard of from this
community until recently. As our kids
see these successful role models from
their own community, they are further
inspired to achieve their own success.
With your support, the culture of the
three communities we serve is changing to value the benefits of education
over the short-term benefits of sending
their children into the streets to beg or
work. Now, even some of our parents
Sponsor a Child Today!
For as little as $30 a month you can sponsor a child!
Visit www.empowermentinternational.org or
email [email protected]
to learn how you can help change a child’s life.
are going back to school to finish their
own long-neglected education.
Of course, there’s nothing necessarily impressive about