Proyecto Oportunidad started as an extension of the scholarship program offered in Casa Nuevo Horizonte. When Casa filled up, we still had so many students pleading for help so that they too could go to university or trade school. Students in Proyecto Oportunidad are both male and female. They live outside the Mission home, but receive a monthly stipend to cover their tuition, room, board, materials, transportation, tutors, and anything else needed to do well in school.
Students in Proyecto Oportunidad also participate in several of our Integral Education and service programs and regularly come to the Mission home.
Education Support and Other Outreach to Rural Areas and Orphanages
Because the needs in Bolivia never end, we have significantly expanded the scope of Proyecto Oportunidad over the years. It is now a program of wide ranging outreach for rural families and orphanages in need.
On an annual basis, Proyecto Oportunidad now provides tuition, school supplies, and tutors for over 200 grade school and high school students in rural areas and orphanages.
Proyecto Oportunidad also provides assistance when serious and urgent needs come up for rural families or schools, or for orphanages. Throughout the years, Proyecto Oportunidad has provided lots of critical assistance, including:
Clothing and food for rural families and orphanages
Computers to rural schools
A satellite dish and water tank to a boarding home for poor students
Water filters for rural families
Musical instruments to a rural school for its band
A bus for an orphanage
A pickup truck for a rural school
Bicycles for students in rural areas so that they could get to school
Legal assistance on housing and taxing issues for rural families
Special treats for orphanages like an outing to a local swimming pool or ice cream, cake and bubbles!
Medical Assistance
Health is always a challenge in Bolivia and KTF tries to respond when it can to assist. We have regularly served as translators for several American medical teams who come to Bolivia, including House Calls International, Solidarity Bridge, Joliet Mission, and Mission of Hope.
KTF also facilitated, along with the incredible Drs. Jef and Kim Getzinger, its own medical mission in rural Bolivian towns and villages.
One result of the Getzinger medical mission was being able to send one of our students, Mari Luz Arteaga, to the US for needed medical treatment. Again through the indispensable help of the Getzinger Family, Mari Luz was able to receive a prosthetic leg that dramatically improved her life.
KTF has also organized several eyeglass missions in rural areas. Through examinations offered at a discounted rate made possible by a German non-profit working in Bolivia, and lots of used eyeglasses donated by friends and family in the US, Bolivian adults and children in rural areas received proper and much needed eyeglasses, resulting in them being able to see clearly for the first time in their lives!
On a regular basis, KTF learns about kids in orphanages or the poor in the rural areas who need emergency operations or treatments, but have absolutely zero way to pay for them.
KTF has stepped in many, many times to help them get the medical assistance they need.
Christmas Giving and Love
The Christmas season of extra giving and loving is always a special one for KTF. The girls in Casa recycle old Christmas cards from the US to make beautiful hand made cards that we then send to our Bolivian neighbors and our many friends outside of Bolivia. The girls actually start making these cards in July!
Every year in Casa we also plan special Christmas visits to those people we think are most in need during a given year. We prepare small gifts and some desserts to take with us. We also do some kind of presentation, whether it be dressing up like Santa or singing songs or both. The students from Casa have showered their Christmas cheer on so many groups, including:
Hospital patients
Kids in orphanages
Kids living on the streets
Prisoners in local jails
Patients in local drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinics
These outings are always highly festive, and no one, neither the students nor those we visit, leaves without feeling the kind of love that Jesus brought into the world on that first Christmas all those years ago.
