Love Light and Melody

Nicaragua - ileana's school of hope - Love Light + Melody and open hearts ministries partner to operate a grade school in the villa guadalupe resettlement community to serve between 170 and 191 children formerly living in the la chureca trash dump. Ileana's school offers 1st through 6th grade education, with plans to expand to secondary school education in the future. The organization also provides annual scholarships for more than 30 secondary school and university students across managua.

Ileana's smile is a documentary film premiered at the denver film festival in 2023 after ten years in the making. It tells the story of a young girl whose lightning smile, bravery, and heart changed our lives forever. The film exists to shine a Light on child vulnerability and raise funds for the elementary school named in ileana's honor. The film will continue to be shown in the festival circuit in 2024 with an online release date to follow.

Nicaragua - school expansion - Love Light & Melody is partnering with engineering ministries international in completing the conceptual design for an expanded school campus, including two-story hadicapped accessible facilities throughout. Digital 3-d renderings illustrate adequate classroom and administration spaces as well as dedicated art/music and technology lab/library facilities. The school has acquired two adjacent parcels of land to grow the physical footprint of the campus as well.

Love Light & Melody formed a weaving co-operative in a neighboring trash dump community in nicaragua to provide vocational skills training and meaningful livelihoods opportunity for five families. After several years of producing materials for u.s. donors, the weavers went through additional small business management coaching and were given seed funding to launch locally sustainable businesses within their community and tailored to their own interests and abiliities.