Background
Por Venir Elementary School serves nearly 400 students from the area of Por Venir as well as several surrounding communities. Although the walls are concrete, the roof is not, so when it rains, the roof leaks and administrators must cancel classes. Multiple grades hold classes in the schoolhouse at the same time with no walls to separate them. The school is so crowded that older students must attend in the evenings, working with very little light.
Due to additional overcrowding, a much older wooden building is used for the 1st and 2nd grades. Whenever it rains the classes in the wooden building are also canceled because both the roof and walls leaks water.There is currently no room for 5th graders, and kindergarten classes are held in a building a block away.
Parents of the children helped build the current buildings and are quite involved in current school project. "They want to relocate the wooden building to an adjacent plot of land that the school bought, and make it out of cement. They also need a classroom for 5th grade. They would need four rooms total: 1st, 2nd, 5th grade and kindergarten," explains SHH CEO and Founder Shin Fujiyama.
Construction
As a condition of SHH financing construction of a second building, we asked that the school pay off its remaining land debt. On December 19th, 2007, Por Venir announced they had finally met this goal. In addition, the community is matching our donation by providing for all the labor costs: they are fundraising to pay for all skilled labor and arranging local community members to volunteer.
Construction began on February 5, 2008.
