Each year, Maranatha participates in a global day of giving called “#GivingTuesday.” This year it falls on December 1, and we’ll be focusing on the Nueva Luz Adventist School in the Dominican Republic.

The school provides a great education, but they are cramped in buildings they’ve long outgrown. There are more than 300 students in grades kindergarten to level 9. Last year they had to turn away 167 kids because they just didn’t have the space. There’s so little room that the youngest students, the kindergarteners, must meet in the living room of a house next to the school. In that same house, there are two to three additional grades squeezing into bedrooms.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Dominican Republic asked Maranatha to help, and we responded by agreeing to build an entirely new campus, with the addition of a high school, which the current campus can’t accommodate. As a part of that plan, the kindergarten students will no longer have to meet in a house. Instead, they’ll have three bright, beautiful classrooms in their own building on the same campus as the rest of the grades. They’ll also have their own colorful and safe play area right outside the classroom doors.