Because of COVID, Completed in August 2022
At the beginning of 2020, the 5th & 6th grade Dharma School class contemplated what would be our DANA project for the year. We decided to partner with Foothill Community College’s Global Brigades Team, who travel to Honduras every year to provide medical and dental care to people in this under-resourced area. In Honduras, over 800,000 people have no access to improved sanitation facilities, 80% of the population has no access to a dentist, and there is only 1 doctor per 2,688 people.
For their mission, the Foothill College team needed funding to help purchase supplies and donated luggage to help transport the supplies to their destination.
Our 5th & 6th grade students rose to the challenge and did several things:
1) With the Foothill College students, the 2020 5th & 6th grade students gave a Dharma Talk to our Sangha
2) They held a “Dharbucks” coffee and beverages fundraiser in 2020 and made $821 to donate to the Global Brigades team.
3) And, they collected donated luggage from the Sangha to help the Global Brigades team carry their supplies. 
And then………COVID hit! The Foothill team was devastated, and they were not allowed to travel to Honduras in the summer of 2020 to provide the care they were planning for.
After two years of waiting and with the world finally understanding how to deal with the COVID crisis, the Foothill college team was able to provide a Global Brigades mission this past August 2022.
Here’s the report from the Brigades faculty advisor Karen Erickson:
“We were 13 brigadiers this year (12 students plus me) working in a small community called Palmira (the first time Global Brigades has visited there). We saw 260 patients over 3 days in medical consultation, gynecology, dentistry, vision (distributing 167 pairs of glasses!), and pharmacy. We taught the adult community members about chronic diseases and mental health and distributed hygiene packs with toothbrush/toothpaste/floss/soap/shampoo/lotion/suntan lotion/condoms/feminine products to patients. This is how your support helped us work with this community to bring them needed medical care (especially important after 2 years of limited visits due to COVID)!”
Here’s the team in Palmira:
And the suitcases made it there, too! 
Thank you to the Sangha for supporting our DANA project and for providing the town of Palmira desperately needed medical and dental care. Your kindness and compassion were felt many, many miles away by those that needed help and you expressed true Dana “I shall give unselfishly to others”.
2022-2023 Class
Our current 5th & 6th grade class has chosen to support farmworkers who have been affected by both the flooding and the terrible workplace shooting in Half Moon Bay by donating to the Half Moon Bay organization ALAS (https://www.alasdreams.com/).
More to come on this later. Stay tuned!!
In gassho,
Carol Yonemura & Debby Inenaga
5th/6th Grade Dharma School
Teachers