Tairicha

Tairicha, the oldest of three children,  loves SRCS.  In fact, she's wanted to come to SRCS since our first year and just wasn't ready for our heavily academic program.  This year at Christmas, her teacher left several worksheets with Sayda (Tairicha's mom) to work on.  They worked very hard and when Tairicha passed her entrance test it was difficult to tell who was more excited -- Tairicha or her mom.  She is almost always the first student at school.  Even before she came to school, she would sit outside the door and listen to what was going on.  Tairicha's dad works driving the glass-bottom boat here on the island and works part of the year for an American man.  Tyrone is a hard-working father who loves his family.  

If anyone would like to sponsor Tairicha with the back pack program,  please let us know, you can email me at robyn@erinternational.org, or you can just simply send a tax deductible donation to:
ER International
2273 SW 15th Street #153, Deerfield Beach, FL  33442
Attn: Back Pack feeding program/Tairicha

The cost weekly is approximately $5.00, monthly $20.00, or yearly, $240.00.

The items that go into the backback consist of non perishable food items such as, rice, beans, flour, cornmeal, cooking oil, and other things, sometimes, pasta, with tomato sauce, boxes of mac n cheese, oatmeal, among other things. We also try to add items such at tooth paste, deodorant, and soap as well.

We try to mix it up every week.   

Also if you would like to sponsor any of the 3 kids that i posted about on March 4th, please let me know or send the donation the same way as above but put Attn: Back Pack feeding program/Jemisha, Joshua, or Kadyann

Thank you, and God bless!

In His Grip,

Robyn and Ernie Breaux

Jemisha, Joshua, and Kadyann

I decided to share with you all pictures and personal testimonies of the children that attend SRCS.  Here is a testimony on three of the them.  My hope and prayer is that this will help you all get to know them a little better, like i have.  Their are 34 students, and these are just 3 of them.

Jemisha, Joshua, and Kadyann come from a very special family.  Jemisha and Joshua are the youngest of 9 children and both have special learning needs.  Jemisha is epileptic and has several learning delays.  She loves to read her Science and loves English.  Jemisha's parents decided to give her one last chance at learning and she's been with SRCS since the beginning.  They are thrilled with the progress she has made.  Joshua was born with hydrocephalus and had a shunt put in when he was a baby.  Unfortunately, the shunt wasn't draining correctly and it was clipped.  Joshua, too, has learning delays as a result of his special challenges.  However, he is proving to the world that he can learn and he too, loves Science and English.

Eunice, their mother,  is part of our sewing project and helps support the family by sewing items at home to be sold to tourists.  She is an excellent seamstress.  Their father, Steve,  is a painter and he volunteered his expertise to paint our new school building.  Marcy, one of the older siblings volunteers at SRCS and is a natural teacher (even though she's planning on going to nursing school next year).

Kadyann and her two siblings are living with the family (her grandparents) as their mom is currently working in the Cayman Islands.  It's a struggle to be so far away from the family, but Kadyann's mom knows that Kadyann is in a great environment.  Kadyann is thriving at SRCS and loves Math, Science, and English.  

The food staples that ER International provide are a great blessing to this hard-working family.

Hi everyone, it's that time again, we are in need of milk for our kids at Prince of Peace Children's home, in Zambrano.  We need about $2,000.00 to get a 6 month supply of milk.

I know some of you have donated toward this cause in the past, and it's greatly appreciated!

If anyone would like to give for this purchase, to make a tax-deductible donation, you can send the money to:

ER International

2273 SW 15^th Street #153

Deerfield Beach, FL  33442

Att:  Milk for POPCH

Or you can send via pay pal, by clicking on the donate button on this blog page.

James 1:27

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this:  to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Thank you, and God bless you all,

Robyn and Ernie Breaux

New school year, 2014, back pack feeding program at Samuel Raymond Christian School

Its almost time for the 2014 school year to begin at SRCS, and we are getting ready.  We have ordered the new back packs, and are getting excited about this new school year. Their are 33 children enrolled, and we are looking forward to this opportunity to provide these children and their families with food to fill their back packs, and no telling what else God may provide for them!  We also will be providing a warm meal for them once a week.  

If anyone would like to help with this program, please let us know, you can email me at robyn@erinternational.org. The cost is approximately  $5.00, per back pack, each week. That consists of non perishable food items such as, rice, beans, flour, cornmeal, cooking oil, and other things, sometimes, pasta, with tomato sauce, boxes of mac n cheese, oatmeal, among other things. We also try to add items such at tooth paste, deodorant, and soap as well.

We try to mix it up every week.   

Or you can just simply send a tax deductible donation to:

ER International

2273 SW 15th Street #153 Deerfield Beach, FL  33442

Attn: Back Pack feeding program

You can also send money via pay pal. You can just click on the pay pal donations button.

Thank you for your support on this project, it is greatly appreciated!

God bless you all!

In His Grip,

Ernie and Robyn Breaux

Carly

As you all probably know by now, we have taken in a baby girl, her name is Carly.  She came to live with us when she was 8 months, and is now 12 months old.  She is from Tegucigalpa.  Her mom is Cindy, and she is 18 yrs old.  Cindy has spent most of her life in and out of childrens homes, and bouncung around from one place to the other, sometimes living on the street, not having a stable home life. Cindy's mom was a prostitute, and so Cindy didn't grow up in the home with her.  After having Carly, Cindy did what she knew, going from one place to the other, sometimes living on the street, staying wherever she could.  Cindy has been on drugs, and no telling what else.  She did decide though, that she wanted to give her baby a better chance at having a good life, then she had growing up.

Ernie and I, since we have been living in Honduras, have opened up our home to be a place for babies in need of rescuing, and that need to be in a safe place, and also for us to be a transition home for babies that are in the adoption process.  So when we got the call to take Carly, of course we said yes!  So we instantly became Carly's foster family.  It's one of those things where you have no idea how long the child will be with you, could be 2 days, 2 months, 2 years, or forever, we just want to be open to whatever God has for us!

Carly has now been with us for about 4 months, and she has adapted quite well to our family.  Originally the talk was that Cindy wanted her baby to be adopted by a good, Christian family, and so we said we would keep Carly during the adoption process.  Well, Cindy has decided that she does love her baby, and she doesn't want to give her up, so she is now in re hab, and getting her life together.  She is finished with her program in June, but asking for us to keep Carly until October.  We are all about God's restoration, and reunification of the family, so our prayer is that this family can be restored, and that Cindy can get her life in order so she and her baby daughter can be a family.  We know God is in control of this situation, and we pray that His will is done!

Back Pack Program at Samuel Raymond Christian School

It’s Tuesday afternoon and after working hard for half the day, it’s time for the students of Samuel Raymond Christian School to take a break – to burn off some energy playing “Red Light, Green Light” and to see what lunch or snack their moms have sent them that day. Each child pulls out something specially made for him – rice and beans; juice; raisins; fresh bread.

It wasn’t so long ago that many of the SRCA children didn’t have a surprise to pull out of their lunch sacks. Low season on the island means money is tight and there often isn’t enough food for three meals a day. Lunch is usually skipped. And multiplication or reading on an empty stomach isn’t the easiest thing to do.

When Ernie and Robyn Breaux, of ER International, saw this need, they eagerly stepped in, “We can help!” Every Monday, the Breaux’s load down their car with staples and non-perishable items and fill the children’s special backpacks. The boys and girls leave knowing they don’t have to go hungry that week. Their parents are grateful for the extra help and for the burden the weekly food distribution takes off their shoulders.

We feel incredibly blessed that ER International has chosen to be involved with SRCS in this way. Thank you, for seeing the very practical needs of kids like Joshua and Kadyann. Thank you for excitedly doing something about them! We are grateful for you!

Child Protection

“Child Protection”

refers a collection of government-supervised programs created to protect young people and encourage stability for at-risk families.  The idea of “child protection” is concerned first with the vulnerability of children and the need to protect them from harmful influences; second, it attempts to offer opportunities that allow children to mature as economically-secure and productive adults.  The services associated with child protection range from food assistance, home visits, counseling, special education or child-care services, and vocational rehabilitation for care-givers, to foster care for children, adoption, and incarceration of an abusive parent or care-giver.  The primary concern is for the welfare of the child, ensuring he or she has access to the care and nurturing necessary to be prepared for a stable and healthy future.

Awareness of the vulnerability of children and the hazards that face them in many parts of the world has concerned global philanthropy since the early 20^th century.  As a product of the “International Save the Children” convention in Geneva, Switzerland in 1923, a series of human rights declarations—referred to collectively as “The Rights of a Child”—were made public in the hopes of inspiring greater protection for children.  These rights focus on offering children access to sources of physical, spiritual, and intellectual growth, while preventing forces that could cripple these areas of development. 

According to the UN, the greatest concern facing child protection is poverty.  While situations like child poverty are difficult to prevent in many parts of the world, child protection attempts to mediate the negative influences of location, background, and economics as well as address concerns such as: neglect, psychological abuse, physical abuse, and sexual abuse.  Problems like child labor in Bangladesh, child incarceration in China and Iran, child soldiers in the Congo, child prostitutes in Thailand and Afghanistan are extreme examples of what child protection services seek to prevent.  Even in the inner-city areas of the first world, children are faced with gang violence, lack of parental support, exposure to drugs, reduced access to educational opportunities, and protection from exploitation.  In order to be effective, child protection has to be responsible to the local conditions in which it is implemented and cultural sensitive to the needs of a wide variety of communities.