KEENAN'S KIDS

December 12, 2014

Meet Aidad Maradiaga

Aidad lives in the village of Chonco, Nicaragua and is one  of nine children. She describes her family as loving and beautiful, and adores her father and mother. They all live in a very modest house of concrete and wood, in a community where opportunities are infrequent. All of the children help support the family by working in the fields with their father, or helping raise the younger children at home with their mother.

Opportunity, like education beyond the fourth or fifth grade, comes very seldom. But Aidad is the one of nine who counts each day in school as a blessing. She is now 14 years old and is in the 8th grade. She is an excellent student and even uses her summer vacations (November and December) to study English. English and Natural Sciences are her favorite subjects. Keenan’s Kids has provided Aidad with the scholarship to attend private school, and has provided food and nutrition to her siblings so that she can continue school rather than having to engage in the chores of helping to support her family, on a full-time basis.

Aidad has now surpassed her parents’ ability to read and write, and as she awakens to the world beyond her rural agrarian village, she enthusiastically shares the excitement of her new discoveries with her entire family. On my last visit she shared her Report Card with me — Wow!

Aidad is kind, nonjudgmental and a giver of herself.

She reminds us of Keenan .