Dear Friends,
Worldfund is winding up a very busy summer, and gearing up for an active fall.
Our Inter-American Partnership for Education (IAPE: a partnership between Worldfund, Dartmouth College, Nextel Mexico and Fundacion Televisa) held its second two-week intensive teacher training program in Hanover, NH in July for 40 Mexican public school teachers. The expansion of this program, from 20 to 40 teachers, was presented as a commitment at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) last year, and a new video of this program will be shown at the CGI meetings this September in NYC.
Also, in July, Worldfund, in partnership with Harvard University, held its first afterschool arts/literacy training program for teachers and artists at our partner school Mano Amiga Chalco, outside Mexico City. The goal of this afterschool program is to develop students' critical thinking skills through creative engagements with literature.
In early August, Worldfund led a group of Better World Books (BWB) employees, including one of the BWB's founders, to Brazil to visit firsthand our education projects in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Maceio. At our partner Starfish School in Maceio, the BWB team was put to work constructing shelves for the Starfish library.
During the months of September and October, two new Worldfund program pilots will start up: a two-year principal training program in Mexico for 80-100 school principals and a two-year afterschool science/math program for 228 public high school students in Sao Paulo.
On a fundraising note, Worldfund has been admitted to the 2008 Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) as a member of the Latin America Fund. The CFC is the U.S. government's workplace giving fundraising drive, and each year eligible employees pledge millions of dollars to selected charities. If anyone you know is employed by the U.S. federal government, please encourage them to select Worldfund (CFC code # 73309) as one of their charities of choice.
Worldfund CFC Code 73309
We thank you, again, for your support, which is so critical for us this year, as we work to increase the number of Latin American students we reach from a current 30,000 to 250,000!
Warmest regards,
