These notes were compiled over the course of this year, so some news may be outdated. Please keep us informed of your most recent goings on by emailing us. We would love to publish all of the exciting developments taking place in the lives of former BECA volunteers!

Jennifer Boyce (Administrator): Jennifer has been living in Los Angeles for a little over two years. She recently graduated from UCLA with an M.S. in Library and Information Studies, and she is now working as a Children's Librarian at Glendale Public Library.

Catie Solan (2nd Grade): Catie Solan is in the final year of a Masters and Educational Specialist degree in School Counseling and Mental Health Counseling at the University of Florida in Gainesville (see the Alumni Spotlight below for more).

Jon Dolan (6th Grade): After several years of working in DC with the SEEP Network, Jon Dolan started a Masters program at Georgetown University in the Fall of 2007 after returning to Cofradia for the summer to work in our summer camp along with his girlfriend Meryl Feingold and her sister Amy Feingold. Jon and Meryl recently announced their engagement! Jon recently stepped down from the BECA Board. We thank him for his dedicated service

Jon Giftos (1st Grade): Jon Giftos recently embarked upon a new adventure...medical school! Since the next few years of his life will undoubtedly be very busy, he has stepped down from BECA's board. See the alumni spotlight above for more of Jon's news and please join us in thanking him for his tremendous service over the last few years.

Emily Overlock (2nd Grade): Emily writes "I am still living in Brooklyn, and this year I returned to Girls Prep (a New York City all-girls elementary charter school) to teach third grade. I actually have many of the same students I had as first graders two years ago. The girls are doing really well, they just finished their first state ELA exam (we will get their results in April or May) - more importantly, I am watching them blossom into book lovers! I'll finish my grad program at Bank Street in the summer -when that happens I will have certification in Special and Dual Language Education.

Jennifer Altman (2nd Grade): Jen recently returned to California after living in Stockholm, Sweden for almost a year. At the moment she is working as a photographer at a local portrait studio and an online ESL teacher through Berlitz. She has also launched her own photography website!

Nina Moore (6th/7th): Nina spent Summer 20007 in Cuba where she took classes at the University of Havana and explored Cuban culture through much travel and adventure. She is now exploring colder climes...working on an organic farm in Halifax.

Kelly Wilkinson (Administrator): Kelly was in Denver a little over a year where he was working for Spinning Blue, the production company that his college friends started. He organized a massive PR effort for the release of their first film 10 MPH and was an associate producer on the second film project, 10 Yards, which they submitted to the Sundance Film Festival. For that project, he was involved in post-production from organizing personnel to edits as well as business development and relationship building. He said, "It's been exciting and challenging and a completely new frontier for me." Now Kelly has moved on to a new challenge, working with Semester at Sea.

Christopher Bowers (3rd Grade): Christopher writes "I live in the San Francisco bay area and I am working in HIV Prevention, using my Spanish often (however muddled it's become) and working with prevention in the immigrant and other high risk communities (homeless, addicts, high risk youth). I am also working on some music opportunities in L.A. and getting ready to look at grad school."

Sallie Graves (1st Grade): Sallie spent the 2007-2008 academic year working as an Assistant Teacher in a team-teaching environment at the Lexington Montessori school in Lexington, Massachusetts. She and Bridget Kelly represented BECA at the Idealist Fair in Boston this past February. Thank you!

Tracy Lucas (1st Grade, Administrator): Tracy just completed her Master Degree in International Studies at the University of Birmingham this December, with great results, and she is now considering her next step.

Dave Marques (6th, 7th, 8th Grades): Dave is living in Chicago and serving as Technology and Media Coordinator for Southwest Youth Collaborative. SWYC is a community-based network of youth and community development organizations working together in five diverse neighborhoods on the southwest side of Chicago. Their mission is to work with youth between the ages of 5 and 19 from diverse racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds to unleash their potential to become successful and actively contributing members of society. Dave is also very active in supporting the work of a number of other organizations and projects including Idealist.org. We were so honored to display and auction Dave's phenomenal photography of Honduras at our first ever New York City fundraiser, Vino Y Chocolate, in Spring 2007. His participation in that event helped us to finance our 2007-2008 academic year. Thank you Dave!

Nathan Paluck (4th Grade): Nathan writes "I am finishing up an academic field study with the NGO Innovations for Poverty Action. I have been in Oaxaca since August, 2006, working closely with a Caja Popular. Cajas are financial institutions similar to credit unions, often with presence in rural areas and its clientele concentrated in lower socio-economic brackets. We have launched a savings account designed to stimulate savings among remittance receivers - Oaxaca's primary income are remittances - and now are studying to see if the account has a positive impact on saving (for people as well as the caja)." About a recent visit to Cofradia over the Christmas 2006 holidays, he says "I thought I would travel around Honduras, but once I got to Cofradia, was very content just staying there." Nathan is now home in the States

Fabrizio Pignoli (3rd-8th Grades): After so many years, Fabrizio left Honduras to return to Italy. Fab, we wish you well and eagerly await word of your next adventure.

Erika Sturm (4th Grade): Erika is living in North Carolina and working for Fidelity Investments as a 401(k) Specialist. In summer of 2007 she took a trip to Mexico where she was able to visit with Nathan in Oaxaca. After a return trip to Cofradia in February of this year, she decided to stay on as SJBS' replacement fifth grade teacher until the end of the school year. Erika joined the BECA Board this summer and sits on the Executive Committee as Treasurer. Thank you Erika for all of your dedication to BECA this year!

Nick Zosel-Johnson (Summer 2006): Nick recently began his second year of teaching in the Chicago Public School system as a Teach for America recruit.

Laurence Birdsey (Kinder/Prepa): Laurence spent several weeks last fall traveling through Japan: Kyoto, Hiroshima, Nikko, and a good part of the Japan Alps/central Honshu. He continued on to Bangkok and then further north to Chiang Mai. From there he flew to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat among other things. He wrapped up his adventure by spending November in India, volunteering part time in an ashram-cum-orphanage north of Delhi at the foot of the Himalayas. Laurence graciously agreed to return to the Cof to serve as our short-term kinder and first-grade teacher in January and February. He is now serving as a Consultant for BECA as the organization begins its post-Koppel era transition.

Hilary Hammell (Middle School): Hilary writes "I work as an International Legal Assistant at the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York. My bosses are two lawyers -- a Chilean woman with whom I speak almost always in Spanish, and a Nepali lawyer. They are involved in high-impact legal cases worldwide to help expand access to reproductive health and abortion and comprehensive sex ed etc. My direct bosses have been instrumental to Colombia's and Mexico City's recent legalization of abortion, and have also been been involved in impressive, high-impact work in other locales such as Nepal. I am learning a lot about how international legal reform happens, not to mention how NGOs can effectively partner with each other internationally." Hilary visited Cofradia in January and participated in a panel discussion on development efforts organized for our visitors from Claremont McKenna College. Hilary joined the BECA Board this summer and is currently applying to law school.

Anna Hickman (1st Grade): After teaching Pre-kindergarten at the Appletree Early Learning Public Charter School in Washington, DC, this Summmer Anna returned to Cofradia to help Team 08-09 get off to a good start. Anna just moved to Sweden where she is teaching at an International School and enjoying adventures with her professional basketball playing boyfriend. She misses Mirna's baleadas! Anna is also a new BECA Board member.

Bridget Kelly (Middle School): Up until recently, Bridget coordinated marketing and communications at ACCESS, Boston's leading provider of financial aid advising and scholarships. As a Resident in Social Enterprise, she received on-going training and support from New Sector Alliance. She was also a member of AmeriCorps and a proud resident of Brookline. In August, Bridget returned to school as an MPA Candidate at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Newly serving on BECA's Board, Bridget has taken a lead on Communications for us: she wrote an article about her BECA experience that was published recently in Commonweal Magazine and she contributed a great deal to this newsletter. Thank you Bridget!

Marilyn Markman (3rd Grade): Marilyn is currently working with the World Bank in Washington, DC. She will be visiting Cofradia in the latter half of October and hopes to shoot a promotional video about our organization and the relationship that we have developed with Cofradia's community. Marilyn now serves as a Director on BECA's Board. She sends out her love to all "BECAneers."

Emily Morgan (5th Grade): Emily spent Fall 2007 beginning a dual Masters in Public Health and in Agriculture, Food, and the Environment at Tufts University. After a quick visit to Cofradia this January, she headed off to do a yearlong Fulbright to in Australia after which she'll return to her graduate studies at Tufts in 2009. Emily joined BECA's Board this summer.

Lisa Parsell & Fermin Hernandez (3-4th Grade, Visitor Project Manager): Lisa and Fermin were married at Lisa's father's farm on August 23 with many other BECA alumni in attendance. Please see the related article about the celebration. They spent the 07-08 year participating in a year-long residential program at the Farm School in Massachusetts where 9-11 adults ranging in age from 18-67 live, work and learn the craft of farming together.

Lisa Power (Kinder/Prepa): Lisa writes "My life right now is all about the first 'BECA baby!' I could never have imagined this time last year what was about to happen in my life. I'm not working now, but when I came back from Honduras, I worked for 6 months as a technology trainer and programmer for augmentative communication devices at a special education program in a neighboring town. I now teach a guitar lesson once a week to my old student, and I still help informally with his speech device, but mostly I'm just having a ball with little Kaden. We spend lots of time with other new moms and their babies. Life is good! We live 45 minutes from Lisa and Fermin."

Jasmine Roberts (Kinder/Prepa, Administrator): Jasmine writes "I am currently working at La Plaza, Inc. in Indianapolis- a non-profit Hispanic organization that offers medical, legal, and educational programs and services to Latino/Hispanic families. I am the Education Specialist and coordinate the Tu Futuro Project. Through presentations, workshops, and individual assistance to students and their families, I reach out to Hispanic students with the goal of educating and inspiring them to pursue a post-secondary education. Through partnerships with universities and other organizations, I also work to inform the community about the issues and barriers Hispanic students face in higher education." Jasmine has agreed to serve as Vice President on BECA's Board.

Sarah Shubitowski (2nd Grade): Sarah is working with National Student Partnerships in Chicago as the Site Coordinator for a community resource center serving low-income members of the community. People can come in to get help in a variety of ways from learning to use the internet to learning how to make a resume or get transitional housing. She is in charge of supervising the college student volunteers that work with community members, making connections with social service organizations within the community, and serving on a community advisory board.

Katie Taylor (Resource Teacher): Katie and her family graciously hosted SJBS alumnus Kervin Zamora over the past two summers to give him time to acclimate to life in the United States. In addition to their time at home in California, they also took Kervin along on the family vacation to Vegas! We're very grateful to Katie and her family for this meaningful support. Now, Katie is working on the pre-requisite courses for a Masters in Public Health nursing. Her ultimate goal is a Ph.D in Environmental Health!

Kyler Arnold (2nd Grade): Kyler has taken a job working for a Texas State Senator.

Anderson Heston (6th Grade): Anderson moved to New Orleans after wrapping things up in Cofradia. Between hurricane evacuations, he works at the Venue Docket, where he serves as a customer sales representative. He is also applying to law school.

Paxton Hirsh (1st Grade): Paxton enjoyed her little ones so much that she decided to come back as their 2nd grade teacher! We are delighted to have Paxton remain in Cofradia, where she has already proved invaluable in helping the new teaching team acclimate to life in Honduras.

Raina Milne (Middle School): Raina has just begun a pre-med post-bac program at UMass Boston.

Thiago Oliveira (Administrator): After working as a school administrator, Thiago decided that he wanted to try his hand as a schoolteacher. He is now a fifth grade teacher at Seven Hills Charter Public School in Worcester, MA.

Hazel Ryerson (3rd Grade): Hazel is still in Honduras, teaching at a Sagrado Corazon bilingual school in San Pedro Sula where SJBS alumni Wilito Fajardo, Raquel Flores, and Neto Zuniga Almendares attend!

Kurt Sarsfield (Middle School): After stints in Austin and Honduras, Kurt is now stepping up his teaching game to the New York City level. Living and working in Brooklyn at the Kings Collegiate Charter School, he is working long hours but assures everyone that he is still "changing lives."

Paul Daniel Stevens (Kinder/Prepa): Paul is living in New York City and attending Columbia Journalism School.

Kaitlin Turck (5th Grade): After finishing the school year, Kaitlin headed back home to Washington D.C., where she immediately joined a gym to work off a year Edma's licuados and glorieta baleadas. Based off of the former Olympian trainer at the gym's snide looks, she's guessing it's not all gone. Kaitlin is currently working in the Public Affairs section of the public relations firm, Hill & Knowlton. After work she enjoys plugging through Netflix to catch up on all the movies she missed for a year and taking a Spanish class to keep up with the skills she gained in Honduras. She misses Honduras, but not making stars of the week. [ed. note: we at the Boletin do not appreciate people maligning the Stars of the Week. Please refrain from doing so in future updates. Thanks.]

Upon my departure from Honduras, I spent three years teaching in a Dual-Language Immersion program in Fitchburg, MA. My students loved to hear my stories from my experience in Cofradia, and hands would often shoot up enthusiastically to share a connection they had to their own home country in Latin America. Parents were appreciative and sometimes quite surprised to learn that I was able to communicate with them directly in Spanish. When they would ask, "De donde eres tu?" I took it as a complement that my Spanish skills had fooled a native speaker to believe that I was too!

While I was teaching, I was frustrated that many of my students were not getting the additional language services they were entitled, to help them succeed. Many of my newcomers also were in culture shock and had a difficult time adjusting to their new life in United States. I wanted to do more advocacy work for my students and others like them. Many of their parents did not speak English, were unaware of the services entitled to their children and often times felt intimidated to come to the school. I decided to pursue a Master's and Educational Specialist degree in School Counseling and Mental Health Counseling and am now in my second year at the University of Florida. Much of my research and projects for coursework I have focused on looking for ways to help the Latino students succeed in school, and reduce the staggering number of students that drop out of school. Latinos make up the highest percentage of students that drop out of school based on percentage of the population. Latino students are the largest minority school-age population and the population is predicted to continue to grow over the next two decades, therefore I hope to be able to provide services to break the current trend of the dropout rate amongst this community.

At the end of my tenure in Honduras, I made a promise to my students that I would return each year to visit up to their graduation. Returning each year I was able to see how their English language skills improved with time and watch them grow, as well as seeing how much the school had grown! In June I fulfilled that promise to them as I saw my former wild and crazy 2nd graders, as mature and confident 6th graders receive their diplomas. It's amazing how fast time flies!!

The 2009 J.P. Morgan GoodVenture competition has just begun accepting applications for its annual award. The competition is one in which a team of freshmen and sophomore undergraduate students can submit a proposal on behalf of a nonprofit organization they believe is worthy of "serious investment." After selected finalists present their proposal in front of a panel in New York City, the winning team is given a $25,000 award towards the nonprofit that they represent. If you know of any one who might be interested in representing BECA this year, please contact us. Registration concludes on January 19th and all materials are due by February 9th. It is a phenomenal opportunity for an undergraduate to burnish his or her leadership and philanthropic credentials. If you are aware of other similar initiatives, corporate competitions, or potential grantmakers, we encourage you to pass that information along.

Many thanks to George Hutton and Robert Birdsey (brother of Laurence). Both alumni of the Darden Business School at UVA (and George being alumnus of the ever-supportive St. Andrew's School), they prepared a proposal for last year's GoodVenture Competition. While Robert's and George's proposal was not selected as a finalist, their work has served as a wonderful template for several other projects we are working on. Further, their efforts have helped us to spread the word that much further about BECA's work.

The 07-08 academic year at San Jeronimo Bilignual School provided plenty of change and transition for the school, the community, and the volunteer team. Over a relatively brief period, we witnessed the departure of two Honduran teachers, the president of the Parents Association, and our beloved secretary and caretaker, Kenia Paredes. Despite the ongoing adjustments at the school, the 07-08 team remained determined to live up to the rigorous academic ideals upon which SJBS was founded. In response to these challenging circumstances, we were fortunate to have the bolstering support of BECA friends and alumni. Solidly committed to our school's success, three alumni (including the Director herself!) trekked down to Cofradia to pitch in with teaching in the classrooms. We were also lucky enough to be the first team to have a full-time Directora: the one and only Mabel Figueroa Caballero.

As the school year drew to a close, we frantically tried to pack in all of the things we wanted to share with our students. The last few months at SJBS included a multitude of fun and successful activities, including the annual Libros y Familias community event, a stimulating middle school science fair, a 5th grade outing to the San Pedro observatory, trips to local swimming pools and theatrical performances, and several hectic excursions to Pizza Hut in San Pedro.

Program Administrator Thiago Oliveira poured all of his time and energy into further enhancing BECA's scholarship program, increasing the number of scholarship families, and working out a system to ensure that our scholarship percentage remains at capacity (now hovering right above 25%).

The physical look of the school is changing dramatically as well. Our year saw an incredible expansion of the office building, which now accommodates two more offices for the Program Administrator and the Directora, as well as a huge new supplies bodega. Plastic panels were installed into the ceilings of classrooms to provide more light for teachers and students alike. New, cleaner bathrooms were constructed along with a basketball court that was being poured towards the end of our stay.

With their unique Honduran flair, the school community sent us off in style thanks to a solid week of baleada extravaganzas, dance parties, and karaoke, only to be capped off by a phenomenal graduation celebration. The event was nothing short of remarkable, with hundreds of hands chipping in to make sure the evening ran smoothly and everything looked beautiful. Featuring key speakers Kenia Paredes, Jon Barber (the 6th grader teacher from 06-07) and Kervin Zamora (SJBS '07 alumnus), the night was the perfect culmination of a job well done by the 07-08 team. We watched with pride as our Preparatoria, 6th, and 9th graders beamed with satisfaction, crossing the stage with diplomas in hand. We took care to soak up these special moments with the many community members that we had all grown so close with. The result was a celebration that proved immensely moving and fulfilling.

With the exception of this year's second grade teacher Paxton Kirsh (who decided to remain in Cofradia for round two of Moises & Co.), the rest of the team felt ready to travel back home, see loved ones, and begin a new path towards our future goals. I know that part of each of us remains in Cofradia, whether it is our love for salty food, the proud authority we learned to exert over a classroom of students, or the warm readiness with which Honduran strangers brought us into their lives, I know there is something we all miss about our experience. The lessons we learned, the battles we fought, the roller coaster of transition, experience, and perseverance arm each BECA alumnus to tackle new challenges in life. I may not be in Honduras any longer, but I still catch myself singing the national anthem on the subway on Monday mornings.

In a step towards realizing BECA's goals for future growth, the Board voted to hire former BECA teacher Laurence Birdsey as a full-time consultant through the end of December. Laurence will be taking over Jaime Koppel's day-to-day responsibilities as she is about to give birth to a new child. Laurence has also been tasked with a series of responsibilities including recruitment, development, strategic assessment for growth, and much more. If you would like to contact Laurence about any BECA-related items, please email him. We wish Laurence well as he heads down to Honduras for the last two weeks of October.

At its meeting in July, BECA's Board agreed to undertake a Back To School fundraising campaign. Each Board Member hopes to individually raise $1,000 by the beginning of November in order to jumpstart BECA's campaign for growth. If you would like to support BECA and its ongoing development, please click here.

Fifteen BECA alumni gathered together on August 23rd, 2008, in Rochester, NH to celebrate the marriage of two members of the BECA family: 'Miss Lisa' Parsell and 'Don Fermin' Hernandez. With not a cloud in the sky, everyone enjoyed the wedding and reception which took place on the Parsell Family Farm. The groom and his groomsmen donned traditional Panamanian garb and Lisa wore a traditional wedding dress and had colorful flowers pinned into her hair. Lisa and Fermin took great effort to make sure that their wedding was uniquely reflective of the couple's character, details that included a bilingual ceremony, a meal of 100% locally grown food, a musical line-up of salsa, merengue, and bachata, and personalized dental floss for use post- corn-on-the-cob. With BECA alumni from several years coming to together to celebrate, they couldn't help but reminisce on how Lisa and Fermin came to become part of the BECA family.

Lisa and Fermin met as she was nearing the end of her 3-year stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in Panama. She was impressed by his baseball skills; he was impressed by her bread-baking skills. When she returned to the States, they stayed together, racking up expensive phone bills over the next year. Lisa's next adventure was as an adult leader for Leap Now, through which she led groups of jovenes on a 3-month trip through Central America. It was during a fateful stay in Cofradia that Lisa was first introduced to BECA. Each school year, the Leap Now group spends one week in Cofradia volunteering at San Jeronimo Bilingual School, completing a work project and helping in the classrooms. While the group was visiting SJBS in December 2005, Lisa came down with fever and couldn't continue traveling with the rest of group. She stayed in the BECA volunteer house as the teachers took turns nursing her back to health.

During this time, Lisa, impressed by the school's philosophy and generosity of the Cofradia and BECA community, decided to apply for the open position of 3rd grade teacher. She returned in January to finish out the school year. Fermin joined her from Panama, and the couple quickly became a valuable asset to the school, community, and BECA. They stayed a second year as Lisa moved up with her now 4th grade class. Lisa was able to provide consistency to her students, which was incredibly valuable to her student's bilingual education. Fermin, a professional mason, stayed busy by working at the school and in the community, constructing SJBS's classrooms, glorieta, and perimeter wall, as well as building houses and clinics around Cofradia. He was also quite the handyman around the house, building tables and shelves (and killing insects when needed).

At the end of their second year with BECA, Lisa and Fermin were accepted into the Farm School in Massachusetts, a prestigious school where they learned organic farming techniques, ran environmental education programs for children, and gained the skills to oversee their own farm one day. Fermin also was able to continue honing his commmand of the English language.

In July, Fermin popped the big question to Lisa, por fin! In grandiose romantic fashion befitting of Fermin, he arranged for an evening of s'mores by the campfire. As they entered the cabin, he had written out in rose petals "Will you Marry Me?" She was not only shocked by the question, but also impressed that he had written it in perfect English! She accepted, of course, and they proceeded to spend every waking hour of the next month meticulously planning for their wedding.

The wedding itself went off without a hitch. Overlooking verdant pastures and fields with lazy tractors in the background, Lisa and Fermin were married in a lovely outdoor ceremony. The 'aisle' was made by two rows of plants they had put down weeks earlier. The festivities afterwards included a pig roast, homemade microbrews and jam, as well as some raucous rounds of the BECA-approved game of "Convergences". Lisa and Fermin even made sure that the celebration resulted in no disposable waste!

The following BECA alums helped make up the bridal party: Dave Marques, Jon Barber, and Jasmine Roberts. Other BECA guests in attendance included: Jaime & Eli & Baby Koppel, Jon & Lisa & Kaden Power, Erika, Nathan, Hilary, Anna, Marilyn, Sarah, and Bridget. BECA wishes all the best to Lisa and Fermin!

New BECA Administrator, Jessica Gorelick, gave a presentation at the Project Honduras Conference held in Copan Ruinas, Honduras on Oct. 4-5. She sat on a panel entitled "University & School Partnerships" where she discussed BECA's social tourism model which was developed by Nick Zosel-Johnson. BECA is using this model in order to fulfill its mission of promoting cultural exchange. In the past two years, students from Claremont McKenna have visited Cofradia and SJBS to engage the community, help in the classrooms, work on a service project, and attend several educational seminars. You can read more about their trip below. This school year, BECA is hoping to extend this program to other progressive student groups, so if you know of any college or college students who would like to lead such a trip, please contact Laurence Birdsey.

Over Winter Break (January 12-21) fifteen Claremont McKenna College (CMC) students embarked on a social tourism trip to Honduras led by team leaders Francesca Ioffreda and Elizabeth Arkell. Brando McCune, Shae Blood, Nikki Holzberg, Zach Ainsley, Natalia Bailey, Brentt Baltimore, Aleksandr Grabovskiy, Isayas Theodros, Natasha Bogopolskaya, Tiffany Otoya, Solon Christensen-Szlanski, Marco de la Torre, and Brad Walters were selected for the trip from a pool of over sixty applicants.

This year's service trip was a continuation of last year's Spring Break social tourism trip to Honduras. The idea of the trip originated three years ago when Nick Zosel-Johnson received a McKenna international grant to work for Bilingual Education for Central America (BECA) creating and managing a summer camp. Upon his return, BECA was incorporated into the CMC on-campus leadership initiative, SOURCE, and the Kravis Leadership Institute. A team of CMC students were hired to work on projects that benefited BECA's efforts. As the only international non-profit, the CMC BECA team leaders saw an opportunity to make real the work of SOURCE and what CMC students learn about in the classroom.

Like last year, this year's trip was an overwhelming success. The first six days were spent teaching and working at BECA's partner site, San Jeronimo Bilingual School, in Cofradia, Honduras. Half of the day was spent working with a BECA volunteer teacher, and the other half working on the construction project of dismantling and rebuilding a storage shed. During this time, students were paired and assigned a homestay family. The homestay was vital to the students' experience because it allowed them to talk about current political and social issues, explore a new culture, and relax.

Highlights from this year's trip included a nonprofit panel hosted at the school, and a classroom activity facilitated by CMC students. Representatives from six different non-profits came to speak regarding their work in Honduras, the nature of non-profits, and how they evaluate their success. In addition, CMC students planned a classroom activity for middle school students on how to address the role of remittances in Cofradia, Honduras. For the activity students were split into small groups, given a fixed amount of money, and asked to allocate it accordingly (food, transportation, clothing, entertainment, and remittances) to introduce the students to critical life choices, money allocation, and the role of remittances.

The trip was a way for students to experience a new way of life and give something back to the community they were working in. The trip's participants raised over $8,000 for BECA - almost a third of BECA's yearly operating budget. Moreover, as Aleksandr Grabovskiy '11 states, "the trip was a way for us all to learn about ourselves and third world development; I am extremely pleased that I got to have such an experience."

Please join us in thanking Jon Giftos for his years of service to BECA, first as a volunteer and then a board member. Jon has played an instrumental role in helping BECA demonstrate a commitment to service learning and he has interviewed dozens of teaching candidates over the last few years. Jon is stepping down from BECA's board in order to be able to plan for his upcoming wedding and tofully commit his attention to medical school, which he began this Fall.

After graduating from Boston College in 2003, Jon matriculated at Loyola University Chicago's Stritch School of Medicine. After completing the first course he realized he was unhappy with the distance between medical school academics and the communities he hoped to serve. He decided that he wanted an opportunity for more direct service engagement. At that point, Jon joined the BECA family as our first grade teacher and Libros y Familias coordinator.

Of his experience, Jon says, "During my time in Honduras, I witnessed the sacrifices families would make in order to provide their children with the basic necessities of food, shelter, health care and education. Furthermore, I began to understand how such hardship might force someone to leave his/her country in search of a living wage. As a first grade teacher, nearly half of my student's families were torn apart through this need to migrate, and long talks with students' families helped me to appreciate that the decision to do so was never easy. Seeing this forced migration, I became very interested in learning more about this country's policies toward immigrants, and I felt compelled to work toward making the immigration process a little easier."

After his time in Cofradia, Jon spent another year volunteering; this time in the USA with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC). Jon lived in Camden, NJ and worked as an Immigration Advocate and Counselor at the Camden Center for Law and Social Justice. Jon's next position provided further evidence of his tremendous commitment to service. He began coordinating the Service Learning program at Fordham University in New York City - an academic program that seeks to integrate community experiences with poverty and injustice into the academic curriculum. He chose to move in this direction because he says: "I wanted to facilitate for others the same service experiences that had been so meaningful for me."

In June 2007, Jon began working as a Research Associate in the Department of Family and Social Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. "As I return to medicine, I want to make sure that I do so in a way that is consistent with my commitment to service and social change," Jon says. "Working in this department has allowed me to do just that, and the physicians with whom I work have been tremendously encouraging. They have shown me that it's possible to combine community action and medicine in a meaningful way."

The International Book Project is a U.S. nonprofit organization that "provides an extensive array of basic subject textbooks for pre-kindergarten through graduate school levels, general library books, nursing and other specialized medical texts, as well as popular and technical journals, reference materials, and fiction." They are willing to send us a shipment of textbooks relevant to our needs if we can identify a donor to cover the basic shipping costs (likely to be in the range of $100 - $200). If you know someone who would be willing to make a tax deductible donation to cover this cost, we would be appreciative of their support. Please ask them to contact us as soon as possible.

Alumni Resume Book: BECA alumni, you all know how challenging it can be to capture your BECA experience fully in the space you have on a one or two page resume. Help spare others this agony! We are creating an "alumni resume book" and would like to include as many samples as possible. We encourage you to take a moment and send your resume to BECA alumna Jasmine Roberts no later than December 1st. Jasmine has graciously agreed to help us with this project.

Facebook Network: BECA is now designated as its own Facebook Network. Join us today! In order to do so, you will need to use your BECA e-mail address. If you have forgotten how to log on or have questions on how to join BECA's Facebook network, contact Laurence Birdsey. and he can walk you through the process.

Career Fairs: Last year, BECA alumni represented BECA at the Idealist Fairs and similar events in Boston, DC, New York, Chicago, and Indianapolis. If you are interested in representing BECA at an upcoming career fair in your town, please e-mail Laurence Birdsey, who will provide you with materials to distribute. This is a great way to raise awareness and recruit future volunteer teachers! It's a quick, easy, and fun way to get involved with BECA.

Believe it or not, Cofradia has entered the age of high-speed internet. BECA has made an arrangement with a local internet provider to have high-speed internet brough directly into the main volunteer house. Multiple users can now log on to a high-speed connection in either volunteer house while the phone line remains open for those frequent homework calls from students and their parents! Although the service does not work when the electricity is down, teachers have been able to use many more online resources for their lesson planning than before. '07-'08 teacher Kurt Sarsfield noted, "Now that you don't have to wait minutes just for a simple page like Google to load, we have been much more productive. The connection, however, is not fast enough to download the latest season of Lost off of iTunes. Just trust me on that."

In related news, the main volunteer house is now equipped with a washing machine to relieve volunteers from hours of scrubbing on the pila washboard.

In November, 2007 we introduced a new tool for BECA teachers. Reading A-Z is an online organization that makes thousands of simple books available on their website for downloading and printing. They also provide tools specific to those books that teachers can use for assessment purposes. It wasn't really a viable option for us until now - since we finally have high speed internet. The books are set up to be able to be easily downloaded, photocopied and assembled. The website sorts the books into a variety of categories (including leveled readers identified by a variety of the different reading level classification systems). Another great feature is that a number of books are available in both English and Spanish. They recommend using the Spanish language versions as a great home-school connection...teachers can use the English version in reading groups in school and then students can bring the Spanish version home to share with their families.