New Website!

This marks our 9th year working within communities in Nicaragua and Costa Rica where we currently have enrolled more 300 at risk youth and street children in schools and have worked in depth with their families and communities to reinforce the educational efforts of each child.
In this time, we have learned much about the people, the cultures, the politics and the barriers to education and community development in this part of the world. We believe the stories of the kids, families and those of our staff and volunteers provide an interesting perspective -- a very different view of the world we all live in.

We've just launched a new website and encourage you to visit us at http://www.empowermentinternational.org/ . Our new website is an on-going initiative to bring these perspectives to light, to share the heart-warming and heart-wrenching stories and to explore the questions "why?" and "why not?"

Pictures of Josephina

Graduations!

I was told a story about a Nicaraguan lady who was in her 60ies. To this day she sadly recalls when she was a child that while she was able to attend school, she will never forget that she was not able to participate in the graduation cerimonies. In Nicaragua, these ceremonies come with many costs and while for us they are not much, for parents it is often difficult to find the funds.

November was a month of several graduations for our program participants and we are pleased they were all able to attend. I think you can see they were too. :-)