Sorry you have been ill, glad you're better.
Please take more care of yourself....
What happens over Christmas? About room and board - Please refresh yourself on the terms posted on our web site - and which we direct everyones attention to at least twice to make certain they understand everything before they come ( http://bruceperu.org/bpovolunteer.html ) - which is also a big reason for sending walk-in volunteers out to the Internet to go to this page, read the terms and fill in an application... We simply cannot have volunteers who have not sent us their details - please do remember this....
- We stop serving the children the 9th of December. - We keep the cook and keep serving international volunteers until the 16th.
- Our language classes run to a different schedule in December - we give our students 1 hour per day five days a week between 28 November and 16 December.
- Classes restart in January, as do all the programmes for the new children, on 9 January.

Ruth, the social worker, is not communicating with me, and I will not permit this to continue. The main thing I get out of all this is news about what is happening with the children. You send me general information about them - when you do get around to sending information - but Ruth is meant to be sending me detailed information such as she sent me one time since she started working with us a few months ago... She is meant to send this at least once every month - in some places I get it twice a month. Therefore, no information about the children: no Ruth.
Rocio has promised to get her on the phone with me tomorrow, and I will clear the air about this with her
.
Another point about which everyone needs to be clear, but which Rocio believes Ruth does not understand. Of the children who are with us now, and who will go on holiday for the summer beginning the 9th of December; perhaps half of them are ready to enter public school in March at or near to the grade their age would correspond to. Apparently Ruth is talking of putting all our present children into Public schools in March. This is not on...

If we put children into grades too far below their age: it will not work - they won't succeed, we will have wasted our time and love just to set them up for a failure. Not on.
And if we force them into higher grades they are not prepared for, they will also fail. Also not on.

You will remember we let people talk us into doing just this in the Palmeras school where you started. Now we are having to pay the price and pick up the pieces for having let the teacher and director registering all our children in the Palmeras school, into their public school; when in fact a good many of the children - it turns out - were not ready. We have since learned the motive was to qualify for a larger allowance from the Ministry of Education: and get Manuela on their-and-on-our combined payroll. They simply used the children for this purpose. And now we are trying to save things for them.
Please do not encourage Ruth, or any future Social Worker to simply register children in public school: but only register those we have gotten ready to enter at a grade near to their age level.
The rest, those who are not yet ready for public school, will be welcomed back into our centre at the beginning of the next school term, in March. This does not mean they will have to wait a whole year longer to get into regular school. Whenever we feel a child is ready; we can always get a school to take them.

Another point worth mentioning. There is often the temptation for volunteers to sneak a couple or few children from the regular school term (those who are with us now) into the summer programme: just so they can still be looked after. I understand this - but don't let it happen. We are supposed to have more children who qualify to be in the summer programme than we do in the winter programme - there are more available. So if we don't have our hands full with lots of children who qualify for the summer term, then someone has not done their job (the social workers) in recruiting children to prepare to enter first grade.

One last point. If by chance we have accepted chil dren into our winter programme who are young enough to get into first grade in March - something everyone knows we should not have done - then by now we will have prepared them for registration, come March. Do not keep these children through the summer term. The social worker needs only to register them at the same time she is registering children from our winter term who are ready to enter regular public school.

If I find we have kept children from the winter term through the summer term, fur will fly.

You seem to be running a happy ship. Well done.

If I seem a bastard at times; it's because I am. Right now Bruce Peru is riding on my credit cards. So I feel even more strongly than usual the need to make certain all our centres are staying on mission.
We are here to find children who could not get into school, as many as we can: and to educate them. We feed children but we are not a soup kitchen. We start them off in our own centres but we are not a shelter or day care. We clothe and medicate them but we are not a relief organisation. First and formost we are here to get them educated, into school if possible. And when we have done our part in this, we move them on: and bring in more. Because there are many more wating to be found so we can do the same for them.
Many hugs.
Keep well,
Bruce