May 22, 2014 - Victoria del Portete

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After going to the monument we went to the local community of Victoria del Portete (Victory at Portete). It is a very small community that is about to start expanding. Most of the communities in Ecuador have small schools with a limited number of teachers, so a lot of the time the teacher has two or even three grades of students in the same room. The federal government has decided to build larger schools in one community and combine the schooling for a number of communities by busing the children to the new schools with all of the teachers from the various communities being at the one school. The schools will be grades one through 12.

Victoria del Portete is one of the communities to get a new school. We were told that the federal government is paying for all the construction. This one school is costing five million dollars. President Correa came to lay the first brick.

Before we walked down to the new construction we we blessed to be invited to a festival being held at the current school. There were a number of booths supplying food and we had young children coming up to us with samples of what the booths were preparing. There was no charge for any of the food. I believe each class was providing a different dish. A lot of the beautiful children were dressed in traditional clothing and dance costumes. I was also able to get some pictures of older, traditionally dressed adults.

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