So excited!

My trip to California last month was very successful, in terms of selling most of the lovely products of Guatemala artisans which I carried there (after a fun but frenzied few weeks of buying them)in order to benefit my two projects, and for seeing my wonderful friends and family and even getting a little dancing in. I also made connection with a bilingual preschool and (again) with the high school spanish students. What a really great time!
I've been back a week, and two friends from Chico have contacted me to offer to help with the project here. So I am feeling very positive and hopeful about our future. One friend offered to "host" our project in their foundation, which already helps in Belize and Haiti. The other offered to head a "Friends Of" group for fundraising. So maybe Jose (the 33 y.o. painter who heads the project) and I will get more help in providing our (now) 15 single mothers with a food giveaway every six weeks, and the kids with the saturday classes in drawing and painting. Their offer to help us fundraise makes me set my sights a little higher: maybe we could find madrinos/padrinos (sponsors) for all the kids, which would free me up to help the mothers with literacy issues (4 can't even sign their names,) and the children with the many emotional and learning problems that come from living in disrupted and impoverished families. Maybe we could even develop a small loan program to help with things like fixing the roof or the water system, or buying a sewing machine or other tool to earn a living.
Ultimately our goal is to become our own NGO and to upgrade the art gallery so that the works of the main painters and their young students can help the project be self-sustaining, as it was originally.