[spacer height=”20px”]Nicolás Fund for Education recently updated our website. We have added brand new photos of each Nicolás Christian School student as well as a gallery of videos to watch. [spacer height=”20px”]Most of these videos were self-produced at Nicolás Christian School by students and teachers telling their story. These videos are a fantastic way to get to know individual students as well as experience the day-to-day life in the school. Our website features dates for upcoming trips as well as trip application forms and instructions, found under the “Your Impact at Work” section. Please take this opportunity to look around the new and improved Nicolás Fund for Education website!
Thank you!
Thank you so much to our wonderful and faithful donors! We are in good shape to face the challenges of another academic year now and start to envision what 2018 might look like for these children and the Ixil community. We thank God for the way that you stand up for these children in the Ixil so that their hopes and dreams can be realized!
Our New Seventh-Graders Need Your Help!
Friends, thank you so much for investing in the young lives of Guatemala’s Ixil region! Through your generosity, students from this desperately impoverished region are looking forward to a future free from poverty—through a high-quality secondary education! Because you care deeply about the students we serve together, I want to celebrate with you some of the great accomplishments of the Nicolás Christian School. I also want to share with you an urgent request as the new school year gets underway in January 2017. I am so blessed to report that, still in its first year, the Nicolás Christian School has already become known throughout the Ixil region as a center of educational excellence! Our science and computer labs are one-of-a kind, and our library/resource center is the envy of other schools. The leadership is excellent. And, most important, the school is openly and unapologetically rooted in the Christian faith. No wonder our students are so proud of their school! These amazing blessings are due to donors just like you—along with other faithful friends—who have stepped up to support and pray for the school and NFE students. This January, a new class of seventh-graders from Agros Ixil villages will start their first year at the Nicolás Christian School. We have begun work with three additional Agros villages, and those children are anxious to begin attending Nicolás Christian School. Three students from San Nicolás, seven students from Cajixay and other students are praying that they will be able to continue their education beyond the sixth grade. We won’t be able to accommodate these additional students unless we can increase our budget. We haven’t yet raised sufficient funding to cover their scholarship …
Announcing Nicolás Christian School Student of the Week
Nicolás Fund for Education is pleased to announce a new opportunity to get to know the wonderful students of Nicolás Christian School. Each week an NCS student is chosen as the Student of the Week. The student creates a video sharing his or her story about how NFE is transforming his/her life. We are thrilled to celebrate our student’s accomplishments with you. Check out the Students of the Week along with many other NFE videos on our new Video Gallery.
Come and Join Us on Our Next NFE Impact Team Trip: November 10-19
Help us celebrate the graduation of our 9th and 11th -grade students this November! Juanita from La Bendición will also be graduating from 11th grade in her distance learning program. This achievement is a miracle! Juanita’s education stopped after 6th grade because her significant physical disabilities made it impossible for her to travel to another village for 7th grade. Juanita is very bright, and she has flourished through the distance learning program. Her stated goals are to help her parents learn to read and write, to write a book about her life and to help the youth in her village. All of these students have achieved an important milestone. Being able to graduate from high school is not common in the Ixil. Many students in other schools drop out to work in the fields or help at home, or because they are unable to afford the cost of uniforms, books, supplies and transportation required for secondary school education in Guatemala. Drop out rates are high, particularly for girls. Many girls get married at age 14-15 and begin raising their own families. Nicolás Fund for Education has been extremely successful in retaining our students year to year. This is evidence of how God, through donations made to NFE, is literally changing the trajectory of these student’s lives. They are completing high school, getting married later, having children later, and are more likely to have children who are immunized, have better nutrition and are read to by their parents. It is considered quite an honor to have North American guests at graduation ceremonies, and isn’t it an important part of our relationship-focused program to celebrate what these hard-working students and their …
Ninth Grade Students Excel!
Four Nicolás Christian School ninth grade students were named as Honor Students for their July grades. Isabela Elda, Isabel Rebeca, María Yat and Pedro Isaías all received top scores! Isabela Elda had the highest score at 87%! The ninth grade as a whole averaged 85%, which is exciting! The grades for Nicolás Christian School 7th, 8th, 10th and 11th -grade students averaged between 75-77%. In Guatemala, a minimum score of 60% is needed to pass a class. NFE has established our own minimum score as 70%. In years past when our students attended a different school, a great deal of tutoring was required to help our students achieve 70%. These recent scores confirm what a great job Professor Braulio is doing as our Nicolás Christian School Principal, and that his educational strategies are succeeding. Our teachers are also to be congratulated for their fine work!
Nicolás Fund for Education: Planning for the Future
Through your generosity, Nicolás Fund for Education is now able to serve students from five Agros villages: La Esperanza, La Bendición, Belén, Villa Hortencia Uno and now San Nicolás! NFE is strategically planning for the future. We have a four-year lease on our current school campus. We have three more years on our lease at this location but we can already see that we might outgrow that facility by the end of our lease. We realize that we should allow lots of time to build any infrastructure improvements we would need to make for a different leased property. We are evaluating where that school should be located to serve our students best. The Cotzal area is more central to many of our villages, and having the school closer to our students will reduce NFE transportation costs. However, we also need to be thoughtful about the locations of other Agros villages that might be sending students to our school with the help of donors. By planning now, we hope to have the new school ready to step into when our current lease is up. NFE encourages you to consider whether or not you or your family would like to be one of those future donors and make a five-year commitment to sponsor one student from an Agros village from 7th through 11th grade. We can only add these students to our school as we engage new donors who support them. Might your church small group or business like to sponsor 2-3 students? The cost for a full scholarship for one student is $3000/year. Half scholarships are also available.
Nicolás Christian School Marching Band
Those of you who have travelled with us to Guatemala know that junior and senior high school marching bands are part of Guatemalan culture. More often than not, these marching bands perform Christian music. These students have never heard “Louie, Louie”, “Tequila” or “Peter Gunn”! The sound of a passing marching band with glockenspiels, trumpets and drums often was our breakfast entertainment when our Agros teams used to stay in Cotzal. Our students would like to develop a school marching band to represent Nicolás Christian School in parades! Do you have a spare glockenspiel in your closet collecting dust? We would love to send it down to our school with a future team! Other marching band instruments such as marching band drums, trumpets, flutes, etc. are also needed. If you’d prefer to donate towards the purchase of instruments locally, you can do that on our web page using the “Donate” tab!
July 2016 NFE Impact Trip
The July NFE team spent two days with our Nicolás Christian School students, praying for and encouraging them. Our trips help us to really get to know these students through personal conversations. The students love to perform for teams and have prepared dramas using mime actors. Students also lead us in worship with songs and have recently added instruments such as guitars, keyboard, a trumpet and percussion. The July team was planning to put on the third annual all-day Teacher Professional Development Workshop for local Ixil teachers. This year we’re thrilled to have 80 Ixil teachers attending from a variety of villages! Nicolás Christian School has its own internet capacity, and one of the presenters at the workshop was a Spanish-speaking Seattle Pacific University professor who did a Livestream presentation on the topic of special needs students. The teachers received a certificate from SPU at the end of the day. One of the other real benefits of these workshops is for teachers to network with each other, to promote sharing of resources and information as well as supporting each other in the pursuit of educational excellence. The July team spent time meeting with parents and teachers in La Bendición, La Esperanza and Belén to answer their questions and obtain feedback. The team also spent time with primary school students in these villages. Be on the lookout for the date of the July Team Trip Report for details about how these plans unfolded!
July 2016 Impact Team Preparing to Depart
We are thankful for the team members who have committed to serve the people of the Ixil region on our July 2016 Impact Trip. The NFE Impact Team will be in Guatemala from July 22nd to August 1st. The Impact Team will visit the villages, school, and families. In addition, the Impact Team will hold a Professional Development Workshop for local teachers and meet with NFE alumni. Prayer is the foundation for everything we do in our service to the Lord. Will you commit to praying for one our team members in preparation for and during the Impact Trip? July 2016 Impact Team Members Al Lopus Lane Lopus Heidi Reynolds Mike Reynolds Bill Safstrom
