*Update: The El Alfarero Santa Cruz project is underway, with the land purchased, the building plans finalized, and the construction progressing smoothly.

Virtual Tour of the New Facility

The Need: Santa Cruz, Bolivia

Boliva’s largest city, and largest student population, with 60,000 students in the state university, and more than a dozen private universities.

The life of a student in a developing nation is very different to that of a student in a developed nation. Struggling to escape from the poverty trap through education, they often live alone with huge needs, few support services and no place to go. They are an urban poor group facing massive challenges. Students are the hope for the future of Bolivia, yet they remain one of the most neglected social groups.

The Dream:

A Holistic project that meets student’s needs on every level; resource for the local church; training centre for the continent; flagship of renewable energies.

The centre will consist of a café, providing nutritious, affordable food, and the free services of the counseling centre, pregnancy crisis centre, refuge for young women at risk, as well as a quality child-care centre.

The centre will support poor students, providing the opportunity for free food in exchange for volunteering, as well as many free support services, all in a Christian context.

The centre will be a resource for the local church, through courses, library and training in how to help young people face problems such as abuse, addictions, depression, relationship problems, amongst others.

The centre will serve to house and train apprentices, on a one-year course, to prepare them to open similar project, continent-wide.

The building will be a flagship of responsible care of the environment, using renewable energies, including solar, wind, passive cooling, heat exchange, rainwater harvesting. It will be the first such building in Bolivia in an urban context, and will demonstrate reproducible technologies for this developing country.

Pray

• for God to continue to work in the many lives who have been transformed in Sucre through El Alfarero.
• for wisdom for Graham & Debbie as they work to make the dream of El Alfarero in Santa Cruz a reality
• for God’s provision of the funding for the project
• for God to prepare the students' hearts who will visit El Alfarero in Santa Cruz.

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