Venezuela is spiraling out of control.
Good-hearted people around the world are wringing their hands and posting videos on Facebook about the protests. (Below is the latest Google for protests in Venezuela.)
But if you want to do more than wring your hands, please read below.
Venezuela lacks jobs, food and medicines. I used to live there and heard of a friend’s son losing his teaching position because the school was closed for lack of funds. So last year I started to send work to him and four other Venezuelan families to help them survive. They were hardworking middle-class families slipping into poverty as prices soared and basic necessities became scarce.
They create and record songs, create graphics for my classroom, and create videos for classroom use in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Mandarin and soon Latin.
If you want to help them, please purchase some of our Transition Videos, Spanish Birthday Song Video or the National Anthem Video packet on Teachers pay Teachers and the money will be forwarded to them.
Last month we made $200 on TpT and a retired teacher donated $200 and I added another $100 and sent $500 to a family that is trying to establish residency in Colombia because the wife was born there and has legal Colombian citizenship.
When I first started helping them, the wife was pregnant but there was no food to be purchased in their part of Venezuela and the pregnancy wasn’t thriving. With my help, she and her husband, one of the singers I employ, made it to Colombia where they could purchase food and the baby was born. Colombia has cracked down on naturalizing Venezuelans because the flood of immigrants is more than they can absorb.
The family has come down with pneumonia and our singer can’t be treated in Colombia because he is still awaiting his documents to be processed. The last time he tried to authenticate his documents he was refused. He left the building and another government official met him outside and offered to do it for a premium. The bribe deprived him of the extra money for the electrical bill so services were cut and he relies on the kindness of friends with internet service to communicate with me.
Another graphic artist designs flash cards, family tree, and other visuals that I use in my class and will soon put on TpT. She is pregnant and the money I send her goes for securing healthy food.
There are more stories behind these very talented people who just want to work and want to live without fear – fear of not being able to feed their families, fear of being assaulted in the streets as they try to buy staples, fear of being caught of up in the protests, fear of not providing basic medicines that we take for granted here in the United States.
Remember the starfish story about the boy who threw a star fish found on the beach back into the ocean so it could live and was told it was hopeless and unimportant because he couldn’t save them all? He replied it was important to the one he was helping. I can’t save a country but I can help these five families of struggling, educated, talented Venezuelans. They pray constantly for help and I believe that God answers prayers in the form of people acting as angels. Sometimes people acting as angels have helped me in my own hours of need. Sometimes I get to help them. You can, too! If you can use these videos to in your classroom or to help someone learn a language, then please purchase them. Answer their prayers for work and not charity. Thank you.
Venezuelan National Anthem Video
5 versions of Spanish Happy Birthday
