Supporting SOPUDEP Also Supports Other Schools

I think this may be my final blurb before the Christmas holidays. This is yet another story of how SOPUDEP is vital to the community to which they serve and further proof that this is a program that deserves our attention.

For the time that I've known about the school I've known that they do other social work outside their own walls. I finnaly got the lowdown from Réa on what they actually do and who they support.

For some time now SOPUDEP has been working with two other community schools in a much poorer area of Pétion-Ville: MOJUB, or the Youth Movement United for Bobin with 150 students and the Les Petits Amis du SOPUDEP (another school set up by the SOPUDEP organization) in Boucan La Pli with 40 students.

Réa and her staff find and recommend students for these schools. These children like their own students cannot afford to go to regular public or private schools.  As well, they assist in their school formation, including school supplies and teacher training. Réa works with women’s organizations in these communities and it is through them and their activities that recommendations are made for staff employment.

When they have the funds, they also take SOPUDEP's students to prepare hot lunches and deliver them to these schools and help to cover the salaries of their teachers. These are rare occasion because they are pressed themselves, but they do what they can for them because of the extreme poverty and need in those communities. Funds for this are taken from their own staff and food budgets.

So in the end, not only is proper support for this school vital to the children which they educate and feed  and the jobs that they provide to their staff, but it also contributes to two more schools that have a chance to affect change, educate, feed and employ in their respective area's.

This is important work, and the better SOPUDEP's support and funding is, the better the health for these other schools.

I think this is an exciting development!!!

Happy Holidays everyone,

Ryan Sawatzky, President

The Sawatzky Family Foundation
PO Box 626, 25 Peter St. N.
Orillia, Ontario, Canada
L3V 6K5

These pictures are of SOPUDEP's staff and senior students providing a food day for Les Petits Amis in 2008. The Sawatzky Family Foundation hasn't been able to provide the funding like we did for the first year, so scenes like this don't come around as often. We are working everyday to see that it can happen again. With your help I'm sure it will!