Bless The Children - Empowering Children Internationally

In Nicaragua 75% of the children attending the Agape Elementary School work in the La Chureca Dump. The young children sift through the garbage with their families, desperately seeking food and things to salvage.

Extreme poverty has brought thousands of people to the dump. They live in shelters made of scraps and have no clean water, electricity or sanitation.

The Children of the Dump spend half their days in the Dump and half at school. Some go in the morning while others go in the afternoon. Some do not go at all.

Most of these children live 300 - 750 feet away from the main area where the trucks drop the raw garbage. The other children live in poor little neighborhoods near the Dump. In the villages you can smell the odor of the garbage all the time, in the rainy season it is much worse.

Their parents make money by: picking recyclable materials in the Dump like their children do; working temporarily as domestic workers (cleaning houses, washing clothes, cutting grasses, etc.); working in public markets carrying stuffs; some women sell their bodies for sexual purposes. The children's parents are desperate to keep their families alive.

The education level is very low. They risk their lives every day. They can get AIDS and other viruses because the Dump also receives medical waste. Many have no shoes. Almost none have any way to protect their hands. Children have died from eating spoiled foodstuffs.

The Agape School principal, Mrs. Julissa, is an excellent person and works to help the children. She visits their houses and talks to the parents to persuade them to send their children to the school. Unfortunately, there are some parents who don't care about the education of their children. They prefer sending them to the Dump all day to work or to the streets to beg for money. The most important issue to the parents is survival.

You can make a difference by assisting children with school supplies and uniforms their parents could never afford. Your donation will help secure the child's education by the encouragement you give their family by caring for their child. Your donation is the difference between a future in the Dump or a better job in the future provided by education.

Your donation of $1 per day will help a child
receive an education and escape life in the dump.

Improving School Conditions for Children of the Dump

On the 28th of February Bless the Children loaded and shipped two 40-foot tractor trailer loads of educational material aid to support the Children of the Dump and other impoverished children of Nicaragua. Assisted by volunteers of the MacDill Air Force Base over 500 school desks and over 800 chairs as well as educational books, cafeteria tables, teacher's desks, school supplies, toys and various other school furniture items were loaded. With a population of 5.3 million, over 4 million Nicaraguans live in severe poverty; along with this 1 of 2 Nicaraguan children do not stay in school. Through our World-Wide Campaign to Help Educate Children we work to provide children an education so they can live a life of prosperity and happiness.