Christ Episcopal Church, Alameda CA

Thanks to Dennis Yee, we have pictures from Celebration Sunday.  See them here!

Alameda teachers Marcia Gill and Vicki Varghese left for El Salvador this summer with two suitcases each.

Each carried a small carry-on with the typical tools of travel: soap, toothpaste and clothes. But their larger bags — weighing a combined 100 pounds — held school supplies donated by Alamedans and bound for a tiny tropical village called Suquiat.

Gill, a third-grade teacher at Paden Elementary, and Varghese, English language development instructor at Otis Elementary, were volunteers for El Salvador-North America Village Networks, a nonprofit that seeks to improve education and living standards for communities in El Salvador. As part of an eight-person group organized by Varghese, the pair spent a week this August in Suquiat, leading math games and art projects at the local school, which served about 120 students in grades kindergarten through sixth.

"Watching the tears in the teachers' eyes as we brought out supplies they'd never had before was a life-changing experience," Gill said.