Sylvia Berkley, the chairwoman and founder of the Dutch 'Stichting Help Sosúa Kids to School' recently paid another visit to our beach town.
She stayed at the Casa Marina Resort where she has become a famous personality.
Sewing machines for the students
This time she brought, besides donations, a large quantity of high quality fabrics.
The school 'Colegio Evangelico Asher' where Sylvia commits to, received from a Canadian organization five used sewing machines.
But what was missing were the needles, yarn and fabrics.
The intention is that students, both boys and girls cope with the machines and learn to make commodities as sheets, pillowcases, curtains, etc. from the fabric (and yarn and needles) brought by Sylvia.
Thanks to the generous offer of Arkefly, Sylvia was able to bring some additional suitcases.
But unfortunately she had to leave 150 kilo of beautiful fabrics in the Netherlands.
Perhaps visitors to Sosúa can bring in some kilos?
In addition, Sylvia came with a nice amount of donations for the salaries of the teachers at the school.
The school is still growing and already counts 225 pupils with 15 teachers and assistants, including a cook.
The ecumenical community with the driving force Eric de Jong, held a flea market in Holland and collected a good amount of money.
The first student has since graduated and could thereby be helped to work.
Sylvia's wish and the teachers' wish is to expand the project with a technical school.
There is much unemployment among the Haitian and Dominican people.
But it appears that for a trained expert or professional woman a job is not that hard to be found.
In Sosúa, there is another foundation concerned about the fate of the children, the 'Sosúa Kids Foundation'.
Sewing machines for the students
For this foundation Sylvia had received donations from the Netherlands as well and children from the Sosúa area were handed out school uniform and books for this school year.
Web: www.sosuakids2school.nl
Web: www.sosuakids.com
