School Supplies

To many of you, school supplies is an old subject from me. I have emailed telling the high cost of sending a child to school in Honduras. This cost includes registration, fees, uniforms, books and school supplies. With wages so low here in Honduras, school supplies alone for one child can easily cost one day's wages.

Thursday, Marc and I bought school supplies for the children at Casa de Esperanza. They already had backpacks, pencil boxes, crayolas and many other things. Their lists were long and included toilet paper and soap for the bathrooms and children's headache tablets. I took for granted that those things would be furnished by the school. The other things on the list were very specific, and, in most cases, expensive. Today we had to bring some people into town and Karen said she had another school supply list that came home on Friday. This list was not near as long, but still, it was more supplies.

The schools and teachers are very picky. If a particular item is not exactly what they ordered, they will not accept it. Thursday I bought the wrong type of drawing paper. The right kind of drawing paper is one of the items on the list today.

Basically, there is one place in Tegucigalpa to buy all the supplies. Or, we could run around all over town and get a few here and a few there. For most people that live in Santa Ana and other communities as well, they would have to ride a bus (meaning they would have to pay bus fare) to town to get these specified school supplies.

The children at Casa de Esperanza have their school supplies, but it angers me that so many children cannot go to school because they can't afford drawing paper or toilet paper. This is the government's way to not educate as many children as possible, thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty.

Thanks to all you purchased school supplies to be sent to Honduras. The container should be on its way.

Terri