In less than three years, Kathleen Duncan has made well over a hundred trips to Rocky Point from her family farm in Buckeye. She maintains, and we agree, that there’s only one thing that could possibly keep her so motivated: the shelter kids she has accepted into her heart and whose lives she has changed, along with the quality of care and education they receive through Amores de Peñasco, the organization she started and named early on in her volunteer endeavors. Here, she updates us all on what’s going on with her kids and how you can continue to help. Enjoy this inspiring newsletter by Tía Katy:
Hello All,
It has been an extremely busy and challenging past several months at Amores de Penasco. I have to admit that if I had any idea of what I was getting myself into when I knocked on that door almost three years ago I probably would have turned and run! I must say that I am very glad that I didn’t, however, because I would not trade the opportunity I have had to be a part of the lives of these amazing, resilient kids for anything in the world. I can say also say that I certainly would not have imagined some of the things I would be willing to do on behalf of these kids.
In spite of the challenges, poco a poco, we are making great progress. As many of you are aware, during my first two years at Amores we had only two children adopted. However, over the past 18 months we have increased our staffing, provided training to our caregivers and had the full time services of a psychologist and teacher available for our kids thanks to support from many of you. So today, instead of our kids being several years behind academically and exhibiting a variety of emotional and behavioral issues, for the most part they are incredibly happy, loving, well-adjusted kids who are doing well academically. Meanwhile, we have been doing a lot of community outreach to try to find wonderful local families willing to adopt our kids and I am thrilled to report that we now have 9 children out with families in the process of being adopted and three families ready to begin the adoption process with 5 more of our kids!
In spite of what you may think, the fact that many of our kids are going to wonderful permanent homes does not mean that our need for support has decreased–in fact, It has increased! Of course we are committed to continuing to provide the level of support that we have been to the current and future kids who call Amores de Penasco home, However, we are now also committed to making sure that the children who leave our shelter continue to thrive. Which leads me to my latest great news…
We recently had a sibling group of four boys and a girl placed with a wonderful local family. These children had been with us for 1 1/2 years and by the time they left us two weeks ago they were all doing very well. They will finish this school year in the same public school that all of our kids attend but our dream is to have them attend private school next year. Last week I met with the Director of CEMA which is a wonderful bilingual private school in RP and they offered to give these five kids scholarships of $100 a month each which is half the normal tuition. So, if we can come up with the other $100 a month for each child then they will be able to attend CEMA!
I have attached a document with information about this latest effort and would really appreciate your passing it on to anyone who may be willing to help support this educational opportunity for these five kids. Please double click on the PDF icon below.
Of course, my next goal is to eventually have all of our kids attend CEMA so I am afraid you have not heard the last of me…
Thanks so much for all of your support to help get us to where we are today!
Hasta Luego,
Tia Katy
HELP US GIVE OUR KIDS THE GIFT OF EDUCATION
Since we hired a wonderful teacher to tutor our kids almost a year ago they have all made so much progress and some are now even in the top of their class. So today I have an even bigger goal: to send five of our school aged kids to CEMA which is a wonderful private, bilingual school in town. The children would attend a special summer enrichment program focused on teaching them English and then attend regular classes there in the fall. The school has very generously offered to provide scholarships of $100 a month for each of these five children which will cover half of their monthly tuition. We now need to come up with the other half of the tuition–a total of $500 a month. We are looking for 25 people to set-up a recurring monthly donation of only $20 a month to help make this dream a reality (Instructions for donating are below).
I truly believe that the greatest chance we have of helping these kids break the cycle of poverty they come from is through EDUCATION. I am so proud of how far they have all come and incredibly excited about this amazing opportunity. Thanks so much to any of you willing help me give them this gift and please feel free to share this information with others!
To set-up a recurring donation using a credit or debit card or bank transfer using a computer in the U.S.:
Go to www.stepsoflove.org and click on the blue Donate Now button
Select enter the donation amount Click on the box following Apply my gift to: and then select “Rocky Point: Amores de Penasco” After Select a Program: choose “Remedial Education”
Enter your contact information on the right hand side
To donate using a credit card select that option and then enter the requested information
To donate using a bank account transfer (ACH) select that option, select the type of account you will be using and then enter your account and routing numbers
After you have entered your card or bank account information click on review your donation and then click on submit donation
To set-up a recurring donation using a computer in Mexico you must use PayPal:
Go to www.stepsoflove.org and click on the button on the top right
Enter your donation amount then click on the box under “make this a recurring donation” Log in to Paypal then click on Add comments or donation specification: and type in: “Amores de Penasco Education”
Click on the orange button that says “Donate USD Now”
If you are not comfortable setting up a recurring donation online or do not have access to a computer you can always write a check made out to Steps of Love, write “Amores de Penasco” in the memo space and mail it to: Steps of Love Orphanages 70 S. Val Vista Drive Suite A3-197 Gilbert, AZ 85296
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