A Visit to New Hope Girls' School in La Vega

La Vega is the third largest city in the Dominican Republic, and is about a half hour drive south of Santiago up against the hill sides.  This past Saturday we went there to visit the New Hope Girls' school, a project that was started by a Vidal and Joy Reyes, a couple from Santiago, who have their children in our school. Together with the Reyes and several other teachers and our children, we had planned to go to the girls' school to put up Christmas decorations and spoil the girls with some treats and as a surprise, a new pair of shoes.

After driving through the old part of the city of La Vega, we came to a very run-down "barrio", or district, up against the hillside, mostly comprised of shacks built of cinder blocks and tin. We parked our cars along the main road, and climbed up a dirty alley-way, littered with garbage, refuse materials, and dirty water trickling over the broken and uneven cement slabs. The New Hope Girls' school and home rises like a friendly place along this sad path of poverty, dirt, and brokenness.

Vidal and Joy bought this property in April, and coverted the old broken home into a functional two-storey building. During the day, 24 girls from the surrounding barrio come here to hear from God's Word and to learn how to read, write, and do some math. Back in June, when the Vidal and Joy had just started the school, out of all the 24 girls, who are between 6 and 14, only one girl knew the letter A. Tells you something about the illiteracy of poor Dominicans!

The school is also a home for 4 girls who are no longer being looked after by their parents. Very sad. Vidal and Joy told us stories of fathers who are not faithful to their wives, mothers who prostitute to make a living to care for their children, sicknesses, hunger, drunkenness, and fights. This is why the New Hope Girls' School is there. To stand like a symbol of hope on the hillside. Thankfully, soon after Vidal and Joy began working on the home, local Christian people began to help and offer their assistance in many ways. Three Christian ladies from the neighborhood have taken the task upon themselves to teach the girls during the day and also to stay with the 4 girls during the night. It is Vidal and Joy's hope and plan to have the local community involved as much as possible, rather than making this project look like it is run by some supposedly rich and arrogant Americans!

Sherilyn and Kaelie on the path leading up to the school.

Mattais and Kaelie were quite happy to hand out some little toys and teddies which Oma Koster had given along with us in July.

The upstairs level of the home functions as classroom and sleeping quarters. It's a very cozy place. We strung up some Christmas lights and all the girls helped decorating the room with little ornaments. They loved it.

 

The downstairs area is for cooking, eating, and playing. There are many things to be done to the home yet, but at least there is a partly tiled floor where the children can remain clean.

Look at this cutie! These little girls were staring at us with big brown eyes, and it must have been quite a bit to take in for them; to have all these new visitors, to get some treats, to get a pair of new shoes, to do Christmas decorations.

Tim Houck, our Canadian colleague said: "The title for this picture will have to be: Where is Waldo?" (see if you can figure out why he titled it that way -- guesses can be placed as a comment on our blog).

The shoe manufacturing company, KEEN, which has a factory in La Vega, donated shoes for all of the girls. They were so delighted!

 

This little girl was a new visitor to the school, and did not have a pair of shoes that had been ordered for her. She got a little bunny (teddy) as a gift. She was very happy with it and held onto it very tightly.

At the end of the afternoon we returned to our own apartment, quite overwhelmed by the many things we saw that afternoon, feeling very blessed by  everything that we receive from God every day, and determined to return in a few weeks again to do some work at this place of new hope.

Please pray for these little girls, and that God would bless the work that He has called Vidal and Joy to do in this little barrio.