The single most important gift you can give a needy family
Ever worry about your job? Your retirement? Your kids’ college and career choices?
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The uncertainty is even greater for the average Nicaraguan who lives on less than $500 a year. A Nicaraguan child’s best chance for survival in the global economy lies in education. A report from the Brookings Institute notes that Latin America’s lag in education is the greatest single obstacle to future economic growth in the region.
For centuries the vast majority of Nicaraguans had virtually no access to schooling.
Even today…
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More than half of all Nicaraguans never begin school or they drop out by 3rd grade.
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Only 5% of the population graduates from high school.
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Most adolescents take ten years to complete schooling through 6th grade.
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Twenty percent of all Nicaraguans are illiterate
Your donation supports “schools that begin where the pavement ends.”
If you want your charitable donation to make a lasting difference in the world—and improve the global economic outlook—invest in a poor child’s education.
It costs $150 per year to send a child to school in Nicaragua. It costs $900-1,200 per year to send a young man or woman to university.
Educational programs funded by Connecticut Quest for Peace, (CT Quest) are among the most successful in Nicaragua. The director of one school notes that CT Quest-funded schools “begin where the pavement ends” because so many of the students are street children. These children typically have an extraordinarily bleak future, but we hope that given the opportunity to attend school we can give them the tools they need to be successful in life.
While upholding rigorous academic standards that train students for sustainable trades and higher education, CT Quest-funded schools:
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Provide flexible schedules so kids can work and finish their educations.
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Meet practical needs that make schooling a reality for Nicaragua’s poorest. We don’t overlook pragmatic essentials—like a pair of shoes and a daily meal. After all, it’s hard to concentrate on a math problem when your stomach is grumbling.
It’s the greatest gift one can give.
Your donation to CT Quest gives poor children the opportunity to receive a good education at 24 schools across Nicaragua, including Colegio Enrique D’Osso and Projecto Generando, among others.
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CT Quest feeds 4,000+ children daily when they go to school. Their parents send them to school because they will be fed and we have the opportunity to educate them. This is our grassroots way to help form healthy body and healthy minds.
For the price of a pair of running shoes, you can educate one needy Nicaraguan child for a year. Make a donation of $150 earmarked for education.
Read about the schools we support
Lives salvaged at barrio schools for Managua’s throwaway kids
In Nicaragua’s urban slums, children face the same handicaps of poverty, illness and educational deficit as their country cousins. But inner city kids face further risks from:
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Child prostitution
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Police Violence
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Substance abuse—an estimated 90% of all street kids sniff glue
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Gang warfare
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As with rural schools funded by Connecticut Quest for Peace (CT Quest), our urban schools “begin where the pavement ends” in Managua’s crowded shanty barrios.
Give hope to students in Managua’s most dangerous barrio
Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, is a city of extremes. As the nation’s commercial and financial vortex, Managua boasts luxury hotels, state-of-the-art hospitals, sumptuous homes and fine restaurants. An elite few Nicaraguans and wealthy visitors enjoy the city’s segregated, attractive neighborhoods.
Managua’s slum barrios could as easily be a thousand miles away. In teaming inner-barrio lanes unemployed and underemployed men, women and children cram into hundreds of corrugated metal and cardboard shacks. With little or no electricity, running water or plumbing, the sewage-filled neighborhoods roil with chaos and violence. Two of Managua’s many volatile barrios—El Recreo and Reparto Schick—are especially destitute, drug-infested and terrorized by gang warfare.
Years ago, when the Sisters of Sion and Teresian Sisters determined to start missions in Managua, they were expressly warned to stay clear of two neighborhoods: El Recreo and Barrio Schick. Naturally, the Sisters of Sion chose El Recreo for their community center, Projecto Generando Vida—”Life-giving Project.” And the Teresian Sisters settled in Reparto Schick and built Colegio Enrique D’Ossó, a co-educational primary and secondary school that educates 1,325 students annually.
Your generosity to CT Quest supports both schools.
Help Nicaragua’s urban kids overcome drug addiction
The culture of addiction ruins lives around the world. Drug abuse combined with widespread poverty, culturally-accepted machismo violence and a dearth of educational opportunities—as in inner city Nicaragua—breeds a unique form of human suffering.
An estimated 90% of all Nicaragua’s street kids sniff glue. A well-known appetite suppressant, a tube of glue kills hunger pains—and is sometimes doled out by desperate parents unable to provide food for their children. The toxic fumes induce a reeling altered state many prefer to the grim realities of homelessness, hunger and physical and sexual abuse.
At Projecto Generando Vida community leaders partner with CT Quest to provide food, shelter, counseling—and to seek new solutions for this stubbornly entrenched problem.
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“It is difficult work,” sighs Randy Klein, CT Quest coordinator.
Give a Nicaraguan child an education—and a future
Tell a throwaway Nicaraguan child you care. Support a year’s educational costs for one student at Colegio Enrique D’Ossó or Projecto Generando Vida. Please make a secure online donation today.