The Fight Against Child Slavery

As you know, we (Mostly Winnie, I’m just her ‘facilitater’) help kids
at risk of child slavery.

We use a six fold approach

1. Really, Genuinely LOVE them

2. Feed them

3. Shelter them

4. Educate them spiritually

5. Educate them academically

6. Actually prepare them for the future

First thing we need to do is to get the restaurant going to have a
place to actually give gainful employment to those kids (now young men
and ladies) we have known for decades. A very slow and tedious
process. Then we are going to work on the children themselves. We have
just forming the friendships now and letting them know that we are
christians and the Jesus loves them.

This week we are just getting re-grouped. There have be lots of
changes therefore lots of tactics we have to bend. Blessed are the
flexible because they can go with the flow.

RESTAURANT – Winnie’s maintaining the restaurant. We are still
trying to get the pizza oven right. Work ethic here is difficult to
teach, lots of issues getting a 1rst rate, PROFITABLE restaurant
going. We do not want to teach failure because God doesn’t. The
‘fritanga’ is a loosing business, too much competition, with people
with no expenses. Italian, properly done, can teach our kids that it
is possible to have a sustainable business model in Managua. Our
girls will be employable for the rest of their lives, if they can get
the work ethic down properly. Winnie is not mean, but she’s not a
push over. She’s pretty direct with her expectations.

CHILDREN – The spanish recycling company is moving the 258 families
out of the dump day by day, with no notice of who or when. They show
up to the shacks, and whatever the family can fit into the back
(including them) is what goes, everything else states. The houses
they move them into are nice and free. However, they charge for water
and electricity, which is atrocious. They pay around 2 dollars per
day, per adult that works there. One truck is doing it. They get to
their new homes basically with the clothes on their back. AND they
can not start getting paid until mid January so it is kind of a
desperate situation. We gave out food, toys etc. Even took the
worst case family to the movie with my daughter and son. The younger
children had never seen outside of the dump in their lives. The
littlest, Eduardo (picture #15) , I think has something seriously
wrong with him neurologically,physically mentally. He’s like
catatonic, kind of hard to explain. When were walking back, Eduardo’s
new house was lit up by a sunbeam. I love ‘GodWinks’.

SCHOOL – We are one week away from the necessary ONG approval to
SUBMIT for the elementary school. Hopefully, we can begin inscription
for classes which start in February by the 10th of January. We will
use the building attached to the restaurant for the school for
security reasons as well as logistical convenience.

Costs ($) this week are as follows

food for restaurant 210 (we were closed over the holiday)
medicine for kids 7
gifts 29
field trip to movie 75

income ($)
310 restaurant earnings (catering etc)

0 dollars profit this week. broke even.