Good evening from Rimkieta!

Having arrived only a few days ago after just over a month in Spain, I’ve come “home”.  Thank God, I’ve found everyone – friends, the Rimkieta FAR (anagram for “Friends of Rimkieta Foundation” in Spanish) team, the nursery school kids and their mothers from adult education, the street boys from the vocational training and reintegration project, the boys in the athletic program, the women who receive microloans, and even the newly planted trees – in good health (“bonne santé” as they say here).

I’ve come bearing four important challenges for the first semester of 2012!

One challenge is getting the grain mill and the cyberoffice running.  Those of you who follow the blog will remember that the buildings, designed by Catalan architect Albert Faus, were blessed and inaugurated in mid-December when patrons Juan Carlos Vázquez-Dodero and Pepe Vidal (seen in the photo inaugurating the rehabilitation of the well “Jeanolgia II” in Zongo) visited, along with three great friends of Rimkieta: Isabel Buigues, Eva Morcillo y David Argiles.

I’d like to take the opportunity to extend my heartfelt thanks to the five of them for the wonderful week we spent together here!!!

The mill (the new building on the right next to the cereal bank in the photo), which Rimkieta’s women requested of their own initiative, will imply an important improvement in their quality of life.  It will allow them to grind the grains right next to the depository, thus saving them either a long journey to the closest mill, or the labor of doing the grinding by hand at home.

What’s more, this new project will create two jobs for women from local families in need.

The cyberoffice was also built in response to strong neighborhood demand, in particular from young students and business entrepreneurs who need access to new technologies like Internet connection and computers to prepare written documents, as well as basic services like printing and photocopying.

The 15-square-meter space (the photo shows the interior the day of the benediction) is equipped with 6 workstations complete with computers with Internet connection, two printers and two scanners (all donated by IESE – thanks a million to Susana, Nereida, and the rest of the team!), and a photocopier, as well as a document typing service.

We’ve got two young people from the neighborhood – who will be trained over the next few weeks - to run the project.

The second goal is to construct the CIEPYD (the Center for Educational, Professional and Athletic Integration  - in its Spanish anagram).  The Center will hold the project to train and reintegrate street boys, as well as the sports training project being sponsored by Barcelona’s Saint Teresita parish.

This center will improve the current street-boy project facilities, which have become too small for the 58 boys enrolled:  15 new boys this academic year who come to the FAR daily for training and food; another 22 who are enrolled in school, and 21 engaged in some form of vocational training (as a mechanic, a welder, a tailor, a carpenter, etc).

Further, the center will be able to house the boys in the athletic training program, who, until now, have had to use the street boys’ facilities.  

The third challenge is just as important:  Starting up a new project we’re very excited about: namely, providing formation to unschooled girls.

Girls with no education run a greater risk of being exploited.  In many cases their best hope for the future is an arranged marriage, often while they are still girls.  Faced with this reality, the Foundation has come up with the idea of educating these girls so that they stand a fighting chance.

And the last challenge:  to buy and put into service a third “ambulance-bike” that can carry the sick from an area with no transportation to the nearest health center, some 80 kilometers away.

So I begin the year full of all of the energy and affection you give me when I spend a while in Spain. With your help – without which none of the Rimkieta projects would be possible – we can both strengthen the projects already under way, and offer the new services needed to make life on this side of the world a bit easier, a bit more dignified.

As ‘you know who’ would say, “Let’s keep at it!!!”