“Centro Escolar Pan y Amor” has been given the title of “Colegio” (school) as the center is now a full fledged school with its first high school graduates as of December 2008. The Hogar San Cristobal (Boys Welfare Protection Home) has integrated in the school, converting it into a “semi internado”.
Colegio Pan y Amor is situated on the very edge of Central America’s largest informal market (over 90 city blocks and growing), the “Mercado Oriental” in Managua. In 2008 more than three hundred children from the most dangerous and poor neighborhoods of Managua attended Colegio Pan y Amor; children who would normally not attend school but would be small street venders, join gangs, become prostitutes or simply live for the rest of their lives in abject poverty. The school started in 2000 with the loan from the Missionaries of Charity of Mother Teresa of Calcutta of a small building close to their convent and a request from them to a group of their volunteers to open a feeding center for the market children. This feeding center started with US$ 120 and 40 children. Today the Centre takes care of more than 300 children in a Day Care Centre, three levels of pre-school, six grades of primary school and five years of secondary school.
The kids are kept off the street with a ten hour schedule (Monday through Friday). They get two hot meals a day and a cereal drink before they leave in the afternoon, the last meal of the day for many of the children. During the morning the children have a formal school curriculum with a disciplined, high standard of education and during the afternoon they receive sports, dance, choir, music, arts and crafts tutoring, a time for reading and supervised homework.
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