San Felipe Lachillo is a very poor village located in the mountains about 4 hours northeast of Huatulco, Oaxaca. For the past several years, Luis Alfredo Estavillo Chávez, a humble restaurant owner, has traveled monthly to San Felipe to work with the children of the village. While his primary interest has been for the children to learn how to read, he has also assisted the children to find more ways to feed themselves, so they will have enough energy to attend school and actually learn.
One food project has been the raising of chickens for both eggs and meat. You can see the chickens being inoculated by Luis and MsSardo in the following photo.
Chickens for Eggs and Meat
You can see a video of how the CHILDREN helped catch the chickens on YouTube at —
Other videos of regarding San Felipe are also available on YouTube by searching under “Silversard.” One, for example, shows the children demonstrating their reading skills to Luis during one of his visits.
A few months ago, the “Expats” living in Oaxaca City agreed to set up a new library in San Felipe with the help of funding from the USA. You can learn about their earlier library projects at —
In order to see information specific to their library work, you need to click on their “outreach programs” tab and read about “Libros Para Pueblos.”
Luis and Elva traveled to San Felipe in recent months to meet with school officials (and indirectly community leaders) about the project. Here is a photo of the teachers who want to see the project succeed.
Luis (left w white shirt) and Teachers
The teachers have offered a large unused office in the school building as a location for the new library. If the location is selected, the community residents, working with Luis, will build library shelves and small desks and chairs for the children to use when selecting the books for their personal use. Of course, the new library will be open to all children.
Possible Location For Library
Luis and Joe Wilkes, Oaxca Lending Library Contact, will be traveling to San Felipe in the near future to meet with the leaders of the community and finalize the establishment and location of the library.
While much remains to be done, it is likely the library will become a reality sometime this year. Regardless, we must remember that it is all about the KIDS of SAN FELIPE LACHILLO who are so very interested in working with Luis and Elva on their education.
Luis Listening To Child Reading Publicly
We will be in Mexico for the next 3 months or so and hope to travel to San Felipe Lachillo near the end of March to see the progress on this project. Won’t you join us via this blog and follow the progress of this small village.
Stephen Sardeson, Genuine-Tourist.com, reporting from Baraboo, WI, USA
Huatulco, Oaxaca -- by Genuine Tourist 