Phil Giansante, High School Technology Teacher, Asociación Escuelas Lincoln, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Silvina Lopez Fernandez, CAS Coordinator, High School Language Teacher, Asociación Escuelas Lincoln, Buenos Aires, Argentina
This year marked the 25th Anniversary of Asociación Escuelas Lincoln’s Community Service Project in the Argentine province of Chaco. Started in 1989 by former CAS Coordinator Matilde Flesc, the first years of the project involved gathering and sending donations. In 1991, the first student trip was undertaken.
Since that time, Lincoln students have built and maintained six schools so that children living in the most isolated Toba and criollo villages of “el Impenetrable” can get an education. These one-room schools have provided an education for approximately 400 children who otherwise would not have been able to attend school.
This year, twenty six students and four chaperones made the trip from Buenos Aires to the city of Castelli in Chaco to complete seven days of community service. This included making bricks (cinder blocks) for a new school, painting and maintaining schools, handing out donations of clothes and shoes, distributing food and powdered milk as well as cultural exchanges with the Toba aboriginal community.
The project also supports the local hospital, particularly the “Niñas madre Toba” (Aborigine Child mother) program which assists teen mothers.
In recent years, Lincoln has partnered with the “Gotas de Amor” orphanage; whose task it is to shelter, raise and educate orphans, abandoned children and street children. On the site of the orphanage, we have undertaken our most ambitious building project yet – building a full-scale (5 classroom) school.
A new book is being prepared for printing later this year to mark the milestone. If you want more information, you can check out the 20th Anniversary book here:
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