It might just be the biggest present the town of Chicaman, Guatemala has ever seen.
Last week, organizers with St. Albert Parish, along with the staff, students and parents of the Greater St. Albert Catholic School District, filled a 12-metre (40-foot) shipping container with 2,000 backpacks, each full of school supplies, hygiene items and toys, then sent it on its way to the Central American town.
The cost of attending school in Guatemala is free but families must still purchase their own school supplies. Since more than 50 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line, there is often not enough money to buy these items and consequently, many children cannot go to school.
That’s when Nicolas Landry decided to step up and do something about it. He’s been to Guatemala five times to see things for himself and work with various humanitarian efforts. When he realized all it would take to increase school attendance would be scribblers and pencils, he knew the people of St. Albert, Morinville, and Legal would rally their resources with him. The Guatemala Oblate Mission Backpack Project was born.
“I noticed that a lot of the kids don’t go to school because they don’t have backpacks,” he explained. “Speaking with the teachers, I [discovered] that a lot of the kids just can’t afford the supplies.”
The idea for the project first germinated with him last year but didn’t get its launch until after officially being approved by the school board along with all 17 representative schools in the public school district. Initially he set a goal of compiling 5,000 backpacks but ended up with a still respectable number.
“The hope was that we’d have one backpack for every kid but, of course, things like that are very difficult because not everyone is going to participate. This year we ended up with 2,000 backpacks. That’s not too bad.”
The container was shipped last Friday but Landry is still trying to collect funding to pay for the shipment. Please contact the St. Albert Parish at 7 St. Vital Avenue or call 780-459-6691 if you want to help.
