Teaching Kids About Caring for Their Community

The week of September 14-20, 2025 Operation La Paz visited five classrooms to talk with children ages 5–12 about the importance of not littering and taking care of their surroundings. The students were engaged, curious, and eager to share ideas about how they could help keep their neighborhoods clean.

These lessons also helped us better understand how to support long-term change. After conversations with local teachers and community leaders, and after visiting the town dump, it became clearer how challenging waste disposal can be for many families. The dump is far away, difficult to reach, and often requires transportation that isn’t available. Seeing this firsthand gave us a deeper appreciation for the everyday obstacles that teachers and families face.

With that in mind, we’re going to continue focusing on practical, age-appropriate steps—starting with helping children learn to throw their trash away properly and take pride in caring for the spaces around them.

Community Clean-Up Day

To put these lessons into action, we hosted a community-wide trash clean-up event at Iglesia Evangelica Luterana Castillo Fuerte. More than 100 children joined together with 25 bilingual high-school volunteers to clean the area around the church and nearby streets. After a lot of litter was cleaned up, fun was had by all with face painting, dental care, nail polish, tattoos, crafts ice cream, popcorn and a pinata! Their enthusiasm and teamwork made the day a huge success.

We are grateful to everyone who made this effort possible—especially Woody and Linda for coordinating so much behind the scenes, along with our incredible partners in La Paz: Rafa, Junior Alexander Martínez, Rosa, Jesús Castillo, and the dedicated teachers Marleny Ayala Salazar, Geraldina Iscoa, Rosa Maria Castro de Martinez, Cindy Xiomara Padilla, and Martha Julissa Medina.