Students at the holiday clubs!

Neatly stacked journals ready to be graded.



The children are eager to show off their English.

School is back in session at Buen Pastor and with it 11 new girls to the internado and 3 new art workshops. Estudio473 is heading a reading and response workshop for the preschool through kindergartners, a painting workshop for the 1st through 4th graders, and a drawing workshop for the oldest girls.

Here are some photos of the youngest new additions to BP!



Lupita is four and is in pre-K. She has two sisters at Buen Pastor.



Camila is also four and in pre-K. Her sister is Frida, below.



Frida is three and in preschool. Her sister is Camila, above.

Last we have a picture of three new older girls, Vanesa, Rosita and Alondra helping Madre Bertita bake!

Below are some pictures from the farm!

As winter began in Peru this May 2011, SKIP launched a project with Givology to raise money for windows and doors for our newly constructed rooms. When funding for the project did not come through as expected, we had been forced to start using one of the rooms as a classroom in January as we simply did not have enough space for all the children!

Throughout summer the lack of windows and doors was not too much of a problem as it was warm and the extra ventilation was fine. As winter began, though, the children were getting cold during their lessons and were finding it hard to concentrate. The mothers who also have meetings in one of the rooms were also complaining that they were getting very cold as they sat and listened to the workshops.



We launched the Givology project as quickly as possible and 2 months later were relieved when we reveived a huge donation of more than half the money we needed which completed the appeal and meant that we could start work.

We have now completed putting windows in all of the rooms. In addition to providing much needed warmth, blocking out the draft, this has also made the SKIP Centre much more secure. In two weeks, we will begin work on the doors and shall be sending in pictures of these to Givology as they are completed.



We would like to thank all the people who made donations and also Givology for their ongoing support.

The potential impact of the Advocacy-Development e-book project is huge. The Turning point children come from a literacy-starved environment. The reading material in the slum mostly consists of hand painted signs on the local vegetable stalls or hair salons, and perhaps the occasional newspaper. Even for those in education, most schools do not have enough basic text books, let alone picture books or story books.



So what effect does it have growing up without books? Words not only have their own sound, flow, and force, but they create and stir feelings in us. They can make us angry or help us feel understood. They can raise questions or inspire creativity. They are not only to be read, but to be heard aloud. Hearing the stories of others is a powerful experience, and starts to shape our voice as we think about our own story. What was my beginning? If it was as a slum child, does that automatically mean the rest of the story is already written, with an inevitable ending? Or could it be different?

If I start to believe that my story is unique and worth telling, then it affirms that I myself am also unique and have worth. It helps me understand that I have power and a voice - perhaps limited by some external factors - but my words can shape, can heal, can ask, can influence, can demand. For a Kibera child this starts to open doors where before they couldn't even see doors, only the walls of disadvantage. And it is acheiveable with a laptop, a printer and some software! Through this project not only do they start to hear and enjoy a rich variety of books and stories, but find and develop their own voice, in small and simple age-appropriate ways. To see their own story published in an e-book and printed in a version they can hold and share with others, is a very significant moment.

Progress towards the e-book project has been slower than anticipated, partly due to funding still needed and partly due to recent security issues in Kibera which have limited what equipment we are able to take in to the centre of the slum. Despite these obstacles, we remain committed to this project, and to helping each child find their own voice, and shape their own future.

Roughly one month after spring camp at the Kakenya Center for Excellence primary school for girls in Maasai Kenya, our friends at Hewlett-Packard delivered a truckload of computers to both KCE and the neighboring secondary school for girls. The photos are so palpable, you can feel the wonder and the joy of the girls in receiving these priceless gifts. Peace Fellow Charlotte Bourdillon of the Advocacy Project wrote first a blog about the delivery, and later another about the girls tapping at the keyboards after installation.






The girls have received their new computers from Hewlitt-Packard, now help them get their uniforms and see the excitement even a simple gift can bring!

This first term of the year in Kenya has seen the Transition class fill up to 36 children, around 12 of whom were sent from our satellite project in another area of Kibera. Others have come to the project from the streets or from the surrounding area, hearing about the project through word of mouth. These children have benefited from having a team of three teachers working with them. New teacher Philip has shown himself to be a dedicated, caring and proficient teacher, the boys in the class are particularly enjoying having a male teacher around.


Having a third teacher has enabled teacher Margaret to spend more focussed time with six students who we found to have particular learning difficulties. Margaret has been assisted by some volunteer primary school teachers from the UK and South Africa who have given her some tips and fresh ideas to help the kids grasp the new concepts and the kids are really enjoying it!


Edwin is one such kid, at 14 years old he has repeated the first few years of primary school several times and is far behind his age-mates. Frustrated, he refused to go back to school this year. A little investigation showed he has dyslexia, something that is rarely identified in government schools working with few resources. He is now working hard to catch up and has made huge progress this first term under Margaret's care. A few creative learning techniques have made a great difference to his development.

We wrote to you last year regarding our literacy programme for 170 children in El Porvenir. Moniker responded to our appeal, giving $500 to help us purchase reading books.

Originally, we had wanted to purchase a reading scheme, but we were made aware of internet software that enabled us to level books by typing in a page of text into the system, and a resulting level was given. For this reason, and issues regarding shipping of the reading scheme (as the only one we could find was in the US), we decided to purchase books within Peru.

We were able to purchase 44 additional texts for the reading scheme and a further 12 big picture story books for the library and for teachers to read out in class.



Our progress with the Primary Teaching Programme over the last year has been impressive. We saw attendance gradually rise throughout the year. At the start, 40 percent of children were making it to all three of their lessons per week, by the end of the year this was 69 percent. 80 percent of children in Primary Grades 2-6 improved their reading grade and 60 percent improved by two or more reading levels.

For 2011, we have increased the programme and we now have 199 children enrolled. This has meant an increase from 6 groups to 9 groups as we try to make room for all the children. We are also trying to limit class sizes to 20 chidlren so that we are able to offer quality lessons (this is possible because around 20 of the chidlren are not able to study with us in the afternoons as they have school in the afternoon).



Attendance has been increadible, we have more children in the SKIP Centre than ever before. We have run out of space and the rooms that were planned to be our new offices, have been turned into another classroom and a therapy room so that we can fit in all the children! Keep your eyes peeled for our next volunteering appeal, as these rooms still have no furniture and no windows or doors!!