CETAP-Lucy Child Sponsorship Program

CETAP-Lucy is an educational-support program that has flourished for nearly fifteen years in Chilcapamba, a rural barrio outside of Cuenca, Ecuador, providing homework help, speech and other therapies, and psychological counseling for disadvantaged children and families. Over this time, the program has enrolled and served more than 500 children.

In the current school year, CETAP-Lucy decided to make a change to the method for providing afterschool help to our students, many of whose grades suffered during the COVID school shutdowns. Instead of having children deal with different teachers and volunteer teachers every week, the assistance is now personal, and one on one. This makes it easier to follow up with homework assignments and allows the different needs of each student to be understood and met.

We are very thankful for help from Claudia and Michele, two volunteers from Italy who will be with us until June, 2023. The women speak Spanish, Italian and English. Michele has been teaching the very small children (ages 2 to 4) elementary English. Even the three-year-olds can count to ten in English! The older children who are enrolled in the Children of the Night program have, with Michele’s help, begun their own English conversation group, where they choose a topic for discussion and have conversations under the tutelage of one of our long-term volunteers.

We are extremely proud that ALL our students progressed to the next grade, and children enrolled in the English classes at CETAP received the TOP GRADES OF THEIR CLASSES! We now have 14 youths enrolled in the English program who use our computers. 

Four small children in the preschool program are receiving speech therapy. One of our former preschool teachers has finished her university studies and is now a licensed child psychologist still working with our program. We thank you for your support that allows us to continue with our work.