Iquitos, Peru, Amazon, 2006:
The Friends Project is launched in the Amazon of Peru, when I volunteered with Earthwatch Institute scientists.
I spent some time in Iquitos, the port city, and its poorest neighborhood, Belen.
I stopped into a school, and asked the elementary teacher what they needed most, that could actually be fulfilled. Notebooks, pens, the basics.
That was the answer.
So here we are enroute with the basics to outfit 90 schoolkids for several months. $90.
Small but a lot to kids who arrive without anything to write with or paper to write down what they want to remember as they learn.