Hotel Con Corazon! from Carly and Cesar

On July 3, four of the coaches from Futbol Sin Fronteras went and helped out another Non-Profit organization here in Granada, named Hotel Con Corazon. Hotel Con Corazon is a hotel founded by two dutch gentleman who wanted to help out the people of Granada. All of the profits of the hotel go to the Hotel Con Corazopn foundation which is involved in numerous activities in and around Granada. To name a few: they employ a hotel staff of solely Nicaraguans, purchase only local products from local suppliers, provide small loans for Nicaraguan entrepreneruers, help their staff and suppliers to finish their educations, and work with many of the surrounding campesinos (small towns in the country) to provide further educational opportunities, supplies for schools, and education to improve their town infrastructures. It is a really cool program and we were very excited to collaborate with them and hope to do so more in the future.

http://www.hotelconcorazon.com/

Below is a blog post from Cesar describing the event that he was able to help with. He wrote it in Spanish and we translated it together into English.

On July 3, Soccer Without Borders and Hotel Con Corazon had a Super Event in the Region Lagoon II in the School Bertha Gutiérrez. The event consisted of donating material of studies (books, school supplies, pamphlets, and guides), sport materials (balls, cones...donations from Soccer Without Borders). The event started a little behind schedule becasue so many more poeple came than expected. We had a schedule packed full of fun events, many national games, traditional dances, popular dances, competitions and other forms of entertainment. There were approximately 300 people, among them the majority were little girls and boys. The region Lagoon II is located approximately to 10 km outside of the city of Granada and it is a zone very little populated and their inhabitants are of few economic resources, in spite of that the people are very affectionate, amiable, and the many desire to surpass themselves and to continue their educations beyond that of their families. The team of Soccer Without Borders was comprised of Allan, David, Chepe, and Cesar. We were responsible for entertaining the children and teaching them soccer skilles. We played many games and the kids showed much interest and a very good level of play. It was the first tome that many of the girls had ever played soccer, and we had to teach them the objective and the rules. Despite not knowing much about soccer, they played very well and many had great athletic ability. Soccer is usually played by boys throughout much of Nicaragua. At the end, some of the boys challenged us to a game and of course we won! But we were very surprised by their level of futbol.
It was a great event and we were very happy to be involved and look forward to working in future events. It felt good to help out those less fortunate. It was also a good experience to make us appreciate the opportunities we have here in Granada with our families, our schooling, and the available sports we have.