On April 16th the English classes started in 11 of the 12 schools CHESS is working with. Only the Institute is not part of the program because their sixth graders are already receiving English. We were fortunate to find 9 English teachers that want to teach to elementary students that otherwise would have to wait to take English in high school. A total of 58 hrs were taught between April 16th and May 16th to 417 primary students in the 11 rural schools that are in the English program. All this was possible with no more than 100 dollars without counting the books that were bought just recently. 240 books were purchased with funds from two of the partners, Alianzas and Pittsburgh Rotary Foundation. There are enough books for the young students to read and do exercises in pairs.

The three partners supporting CHESS (Programa Alianzas from USAID, Pittsburgh Rotary Foundation and Gran Pacifica) firmly believe that students should not wait until seventh grade to start learning the most important language in Nicaragua besides Spanish. We would like to plant the seed of the English language in them as early as possible in their lives and make it as fun as possible.

Well, I have great news. In one of my visit to the schools, more specifically in California School (yes, the community give the school the names they feel in connection with or the names they simply like best) the teacher and students greeted me with a song in English that you can hear by clicking here. Other students were able to introduce themselves.

In Osneida School, the one GP staff and shareholders painted in January, students were able to tell me names of fruits and animals, and they were thrilled with their books. Here is a picture of students after they have received their text books.

It is important to mention that we have obtained these results after two weeks of strike. Teachers nationwide were asking the Ministry of Education a raise in their salary and classes stopped during that period of time. We expect to see even better results next month.

In this issue I would like to thank our English teachers who are committed people in love with what they do. Their names are: