Project Launch:

Santa Rita is a small farming community in northwestern El Salvador that has a small school that offers classes up to ninth grade, while most of the surrounding communities do not have schools that go to ninth grade. At the school, supplies are extremely limited, each child has only one pencil and notebook, and the school is not equipped with a small library, not even reading books let alone textbooks or atlases, making it particularly hard for the school teachers to teach the children about geography. With a $185 grant from World Connect’s Kids to Kids Program, students painted a “Mapa Mundial” on one of the exterior walls of the school. The Mapa Mundial project helped address the school’s lack of maps, atlases, and textbooks, gave students a resource – a map – that can last for years to come, and gave students a fun learning experience. With an absence of arts education as well, this project helped the students tap into their creativity.