Can You Help Us Get School Supplies to Children in Costa Rica?

An Urgent Need & An Amazing Opportunity For You To Help Children Get the School Supplies They Need

It is February and February is the time in which families in Costa Rica head out to buy the $100 of school supplies each of their children need in order to continue going to school. Stores fill the newspapers with ads about special deals on what the students need. It is an exciting time for a country that has fought very hard to help their people be educated.

February is a little different if you are a young person living in a precario or squatter's settlement like the El Triangulo de la Solidaridad neighborhood we work in. With the average income per household being around $200 in the precario, most families can barely afford one child's $100 of school supplies and that is only if things are going well for their family.

It is easy to see why the average precario resident has only made it through the 3rd grade. It only takes one tough February economically where $100 might as well be $1 million and the boy or girl is forced to drop out of school, surrendering any chance of a life outside of poverty one day.

Fifty Young Peoples Lives Are Changed in the Precario

In 2007, our team began helping about nine families purchase the school supplies they needed. It was life-changing for them but, surprisingly, it was life-altering for us as well. Family members wept as we walked into hand them the supplies they needed.

In 2008, we went ahead and set aside $1000 to help 10 families get school supplies. We sent out an email to all of you and you responded by either donating $ or supplies. Your response was overwhelming. As a result, over fifty students received school supplies. The precario was dramatically impacted.

Over the course of the year, we took the program further. We opened tutoring centers in the precario (see photo above) where the students could also receive the tutoring support they would need to be able to do well in school. It isn't enough to help kids get into school. We have to help them do well once they get there. These tutoring centers have been a powerful tool, providing upper class private school students with the life changing opportunity to come and volunteer the tutoring that is dramatically helping the children from the precario.

This is a gift that keeps on giving.

How You Can Help A Child Have A Chance At A Future

So here we are in February again. Families are filling out request forms that we have designed where they are agreeing to report their child's grades each report card so we can track their progress and provide support for those who might struggle. We have just started collecting the lists and have already received 34 back with 59 in total having been requested.

I want to invite you into an amazing opportunity to help these young people and their families. If you can and if you are interested, please click on the link below to go to our website at www.boywithaball.com and make an online donation. You can also send in a check to our office at P.O. Box 14387, San Antonio, TX, 78214-4387. Your gift will help us to be combined with those who have brought down school supplies to fill these lists and help these students have the opportunity to stay in school.

Click Here to Go to Boy With a Ball's Online Donation Page to Make a Donation to Help These Students

One Final Exciting Update

A dream is coming true for the Boy With a Ball/FUNDADEJO team in Costa Rica as Auburn University's graduate design program has taken on the project of designing and coming to Costa Rica to build us a community/tutoring center for us in the precario. The group is currently raising funds for the project with our staff to design the building. To find out more, click on the tutoring center box below.


(Click here to enter the site and learn more about the center!)


Thank you so much for your ongoing investment in our work to reach and equip young people. It is great to work with you as we walk into seeing these young lives changed.

Jamie Johnson

Executive Director
boywithaball@gmail.com
www.boywithaball.com
210-858-5812

Back One Year Later

Well...almost a year went by without us making a single entry on this blog.
What a year it has been. As an organization and as a team we have seen more growth and development in our impact then we could have every imagined.

We do realize, however, that this has made us pretty bad bloggers! As a result, we are making some changes. On Wednesday, you will see our new web page spring up at our old address: www.boywithaball.com. This site is a big step forward in keeping you connected to all that is happening in our teams here in San Jose, Costa Rica as well as on the Southside of San Antonio, Texas, U.S.A. This site will be constantly updated to provide almost a newspaper-like feel that allows you to flow as part of the team.

Alongside this effort, this blog will now become a regular tool that we will use to do the same work as the website. We are even bringing in a new intern to head the effort.

So please help us by getting in here and asking questions, making comments and spreading the word about Boy With a Ball and our work in reaching and equipping young people. We very much need you.

See you in the next few days!

Jamie Johnson
Executive Director
Boy With a Ball
boywithaball@gmail.com

Interesting new report from UNICEF on the state of young people in wealthier nations

The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre this week released Report Card No. 7: Child Poverty in Perspective - An overview of child well-being in rich countries which focuses on the well-being of children and young people in the world’s advanced economies and provides the first comprehensive assessment.

The U.S. and United Kingdom did not fare so well in this report. The document can be found at this address:
http://www.unicef-icdc.org/presscentre/presskit/reportcard7/rc7_eng.pdf

What do you think the reasons would be that the U.S. would struggle? In a wealthy country that is reknowned for it's levels of philanthropy, which has an active civil society and a church on every corner almost, what could be missing?

Is it that these countries are strong, proud and productive within a system that places the system and productivity above human relationships and well-being? Is it that these nations have large immigrant influxes and are in conflict of how to respond to them? This does seem to be a problem in so many nations. We decide who should be here and who should not and yet that doesn't stop them from coming. What it does stop us from doing is responding to them in a way that will help them. "Why should we? They are illegal!" And yet they are here.

We begin to respond to them as illegal, invisible people and sense no responsibility to pay attention to them. Many of us see it as charitable to ignore them...at least we are not kicking them out. And yet the numbers of these people increase and they begin to define who we are as a country. Is that phenomena part of why the U.S. and U.K. are getting such bad grades in regards to how they care for their children?

Who made a difference in your life?

Much of the work of Boy With a Ball is focused on relationships. I honestly believe that the world is in the state it is in because of negative relationships and the painful consequences that come out of them...broken families, abandoned children, abusive parents, hopeless communities, violence, manipulation, fear. The only way to fix the result of negative relationships is through positive relationships.

We focus on four main tools in this fight to put young people in the "garden" of positive relationships: aggressive outreach (we hit the streets in teams to go to where young people are, meet them and become their friends), one-to-one mentoring relationships, small group communities (the young people we reach and mentor are set into communities of caring adults and other young leaders where they can grow while being surrounded by others growing in the same situation) and then finally educational resources (we use the mentoring relationships and small group communities as a platform to offer training/counseling/coaching in the areas that young people need.)

My life was changed at 16 years old when I met a pastor named Jim Newsom in the midst of a tumultuous time. He pulled me into an amazing community of people who were growing and learning as I wanted to and the garden of these relationships equipped me to change dramatically in just a few years. Issues like character, spiritual development, relationships, finances, my future and much more were touched on and transformed.

If you have the time and don't mind sharing a bit of your story, who was the person/people that impacted your life?