Just a couple of years after some communities on Ometepe got electricity for the first time, all primary schools on the island will have laptops for students next year, thanks to a grant from Fundación Zamora Terán, a Nicaraguan NGO.
The 24 students of the 2011 Student Delegation went to Ometepe with suitcases full of school supplies. They came back loaded with stories from four towns: Moyogalpa, Angul, San Pedro and Sacramento.
To help celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Sister Islands Association, 13 delegates from Ometepe will visit Bainbridge Island Sept. 24-Oct. 4. They will stay with families on Bainbridge, including some who were guests in the delegates' own homes.
The Sister Islands' Health Committee was thrilled to learn this summer that the Seattle International Foundation has awarded a $9,800 grant to help pay for health education on Ometepe and improvements to six health care facilities there.
Third-graders in Boo Schneider's class at Ordway Elementary School on Bainbridge are celebrating the success of their 2011 calendar, which had a farm theme. Students made a profit of $10,385.
The Student Auction Committee and the 2011 Student Delegation want to thank everyone who supported their Dinner Auction and Community Celebration. The students raised an astounding $14,000.
Sheila Kelley reports on her 2½-month stay on Ometepe, where she volunteered as an aide in high school English classes at two schools and was warmly embraced by her host families and the communities of La Flor and Los Angeles.
Annie Lukins, one of two Bainbridge High School students on the 2009 Health Delegation, reports on the 10-day trip, during which delegates visited 12 clinics and hospitals. "What we discovered," she writes, "was a work force of nurses and doctors with outstanding fortitude."
Delegations from Beacon Hill International School have been traveling to Balgüe for eight years, building a relationship with the primaria there and with its teachers, administrators, students, and families. This fall the first delegation from Balgüe is visiting Beacon Hill.
Sean Willerford, a 2010 student delegate, reports on his third trip to Ometepe, where he stayed in the town of San Jose del Sur, about half an hour by bus from Moyogalpa.
