Love and Joy - In Egypt!

That's me in the middle!

I had the wonderful opportunity to visit one of PureFUN's partners halfway around the world in Cairo, Egypt back in November of 2008. Love and Joy is the name of the child care center that offers it's services to many children and families that cannot afford to pay full price for care. Some of the children even come from the garbage dump areas of Cairo to stay at the orphanage that is housed in the same facility as the child care.

We're proud to be able to help Love and Joy by contributing to the salary for the director as they build their enrollment and strengthen the program at the center. By the way - the salary for a great director in Cairo is $700 per month!

Magdy Bassaly is the president of this organization and when he was in the US over the Christmas time I was pleased to show him how the "centers" concept should be used in the classroom (thanks to Kids R Kids #8 for this tour). He now reports that he is working hard to implement center based learning in Cario at Love and Joy.

Maybe one of you would like to join me this fall......

Crab races for kids

Bubba the crab trying to escape!

Over Christmas break our family went Scuba Diving on the island of Roatan, Honduras. The place we stayed was a great diving resort and the owners, Ted and Cam, have enjoyed 15 years of escape from the busy life here in the US. Not content to just run the resort they have taken on the challenge of improving the schools on the island. The statistics are astounding - not enough class space, low attendance, even lower completion stats.

So - every Thursday night they host a big crab race event. The night we were there over 100 people were in attendance. It's simple - buy 3 crabs for 3 races for $10. If your's wins you get to split the pot. But then the winner is heavily influenced to return his winnings to the school fund. After some additional challenges and pleas the races for our night raised over $1000 for the school project Ted and Cam are sponsoring.

We can all do something for kids - what can you do ?