On the eastern savannahs of the Dominican Republic, sugar cane is harvested by men who live in some of the most primitive conditions in the Western Hemisphere.  Earning less than $8 per day, they barely earn enough to feed themselves, let alone their families.

Yet their families are happy.  Their children play and laugh just like our kids, but they go to bed hungry most nights.  Few children know that they will live out their lives working in the sugar cane fields, trapped in the abject poverty and virtual slavery of the sugar cane villages, called "bateyes" (sugar workers' town).

Many of these children have only a life of hard manual labor and meager earnings in their future - but not all of them.  The most fortunate Sugar Cane Kids have the opportunity to go school and break the cycle of poverty in which their parents and grandparents lived.

If they can afford the cost of the school uniform, a pair of shoes, and a few pesos for a meal, the Sugar Cane Kids can go to school.  When the Sugar Cane Kids go to school, they take full advantage of this precious opportunity.  When they have the opportunity to go to school, many of them excel at their studies and go on to graduate from the best universities in the Dominican Republic.

• Read the SCHOOL VISITATION REPORT from San Pedro, D.R., April 25, 2008

• Read Lin's Mission Trip Report here

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