Kids finally go back to school after a full two month break since mid December. Last I counted it was up to fifteen neighborhood kids whom we supplied with backpacks filled with school supplies. This year I had to limit how many kids were assisted as once word gets out that there are free backpacks and supplies, there are many takers knocking at the door. The way that I thin the herd is influenced by some advice from my neighbor… she comments on Manuel – a boy who is smart and eager to go to school and went for the first time last year after receiving supplies from me. ” va le la pena” she says, a Nicaraguan phrase that means “it’s worth it!” 
Gib Cooper bamboo expert of the Americas, was here in Nicaragua to visit and check on progress at our various nurseries and plantations. It was a unique opportunity for Oren to go along and learn something about bamboo from the best source possible. Oren’s marketing work investigating NGO’s (that may be partners of CO2 Bambu for reforestation), can only be enhanced by his first hand exposure to bamboo. Many long and bumpy hours on the road going from one nursery to another checking on progress of seedlings and visiting natural bamboo forests to find bamboo that is flowering. Bamboo flowers only once in seventy or a hundred years and as serendipity has it, it is flowering now in Nicaragua. Collection of seeds is a unique opportunity for new seedlings.
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Great post!! Concisely covers so many subjects. The festival sounds exciting. Cute Braids!!!
An idea – what about getting the kids that receive your help, give back an hour a week of some kind of community service?
For e.g.: Helping littler kids with school work, helping out at the animal clinic (or even just watching there to learn animal kindness), sweeping the clinic, any kind of simple volunteer work to benefit the community, who knows?
Usually people/kids value something that is given them much more when it is not entirely free, and here is an invaluable informal educational opportunity?