Our Coro Fabrettino, comprised of 30 students aged 11 to 20 from Cusmapa, is coming to Washington DC June 20 - 26!

The choir was invited by the International Children's Art Festival to perform on the National Mall, along with other youth groups from around the world. The Coro Fabrettino will be the only representatives from Nicaragua and they are really looking forward to spreading the word about Fabretto and their home country to new audiences throughout the city.

Taking advantage of their presence here, we have put together a series of performances. Details still need to be finalized, but here is a preview of what we have so far.

Thursday, June 21
Welcome Concert at the Embassy of Nicaragua, By Invitation Only
Friday, June 22
National Geographic Society, performance for NGS staff
Saturday, June 23
Ticketed concert at Georgetown University's Gaston Hall
Sunday, June 24
ICAF performance on the Mall - free to the public
Ticket performance for the Latino Community in Arlington County
Monday, June 25
Atrium at the Inter-American Development Bank - free to the public
The Millenium Stage at the Kennedy Center - free to the public

The children are so excited to come to the United States. We hope that if you are in the DC area, you'll come see one of the shows in support of these amazing young performers. Details on the schedule will be available shortly on the events section of our website as well as tickets for the Georgetown University and Arlington concerts.

Thanks to the generosity of some wonderful attendees of our New York Night for Niņos event on April 27, the live auction raised $36,000 for our Libros for Life project!

We more than met our goal of raising $5,000 for each of our five center libraries which will allow us to stock the shelves with between 800 and 1,000 mostly Spanish titles of fun reading material for the kids. The balance of the funds raised will be used to help in the construction of a new community resource center in a very rural and isolated community in the north of the country.

As you can see in the picture, our library shelves are stocked primarily with copies of text books. While necessary for instruction, they don't incite the kids to read for fun. Through the Libros for Life project, we want to encourage our students to learn to read for pleasure, so that they can become lifelong readers. Access to story and fiction books is something we take for granted here in the United States, yet in Nicaragua it is almost a luxury. Many households have no printed materials at all, and poor children there are likely never to have had a book of their own.

We are excited to open the world of story books to the children served by our centers and eventually bring such resources out to our rural schools. It will take some time for us to buy, deliver and catalog the books but when we get it all done, we'll be sure to share the final results with you.

Thank you live auction donors for giving us the chance to take on this great project!

We have a new development effort going on at Fabretto - The Fabretto Young Professionals Network. YPN is a group of young (or young-at-heart!) volunteers dedicated to strengthening and expanding Fabretto's network of supporters and advocates in the United States. Though based in New York, co- founders Carlo Castilla and Yurinha Schmidt are planning for YPN's membership and efforts to take on a national scope.

YPN is looking for new members who share a passion for: a) empowering Nicaragua's needy children to overcome their educational, financial, and social challenges; b) helping the Fabretto organization by attending fundraising events, forming strategic partnerships, and helping to building a stronger infrastructure; and c) building a multi-national network of friends and business partners to assist in all these efforts. Activities will include social and working get- togethers, invitations to seminars, webcasts, and other similar opportunities for networking and knowledge sharing.

If you are interested in becoming a part of this fun and dynamic project, contact Carlo Castilla at ccastilla01@yahoo.com or Yurinha Schmidt at yurinha.schmidt@gmail.com.

Six year old cutie pie, Cristhian Alejandra Aguilar Rivas, attends our program at the San Isidro center. Her teachers report that she is doing very well in first grade. She loves to be with her friends and enjoys drawing and painting. She spends a lot of time playing with her toys and sharing them with others.

Her Home Community: San Isidro is a rural community outside of Managua on a dirt road that is practically impassable during the rainy season. Most of the resident families are subsistence farmers, growing small crops of beans or corn to meet basic needs.

Her Home & Family Situation: Cristhian lives with her mother, grandparents and uncles and aunts in a house with walls of wood, a dirt floor, and a zinc roof. Compared to many of their neighbors, they are fortunate to have both electricity and water in their house as well as a latrine on the property. Cristhians' father abandoned the family when she was born. Her mother works in a textile factory earning approximately $100 per month. Cristhian's grandparents take care of her so her mother can work.

Enrolled in Fabretto because: Cristhian's mother hopes her daughter can go to college someday and become a professional. She says she feels blessed that Cristhian is attending the Fabretto Center where she receives education, a uniform, health care, and lunch. She says she owes Fabretto a lot. She mentions that most of the parents have temporary jobs and sometimes children don't have food at their homes.

To sponsor Cristhian Alejandra, please contact our sponsorship coordinator Joanne Mazzella at sponsore dchild@fabretto.org Sponsorship is $30 a month and in return for your support - you will get lovely, personal letters twice a year from Cristhian, the gratitude of her family for your support, and the knowledge that you are helping mold one very special child's life.