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What does 500 dollars buy?
A place in the programme costs about 920 dollars in direct expenses. Here is the breakdown, item by item, and why 500 covers a little over half.
Start with the awkward number
For a while we said that 500 dollars covered a full scholarship. When we did the sums with the foundation's planning budget, the real figure is different: a place in the programme costs about 920 dollars in direct expenses.
We would rather say so. Anyone who gives deserves to know what part of the road they are paying for, and 500 dollars pays for a little over half. That is still a lot. Here is the breakdown.
Where the number comes from
The planning budget, in dollars, allows 99,100 in running costs a year to train 108 young people in three cohorts. Divided by 108, that is 918 per student.
918 dollars per student
- One year's running costs, divided by the 108 places.
1,180 with the initial investment
- Adding what is bought only once: kitchen and bar equipment, twenty computers, furniture and a generator, 28,287 in total.
0 for the campus
- The classrooms, the kitchen, the bar and the eco-lodge do not appear in the budget. Sienna Village provides them.
An estimate, not an invoice
- It is a budget drawn up before the first cohort. When there are real costs from a complete cohort, they will replace these figures.
Source: La Fábrica de Sueños, planning budget, February 2025.
Where each dollar goes
Of every dollar of running costs:
59 cents: the people who teach and support
- A coordinator, an educational director and three teachers who still practise their trade and teach part-time. It is the largest item, and it is what makes the programme a programme rather than a leaflet.
26 cents: food and drink
- Feeding the students for the twelve weeks. About 240 dollars per person.
15 cents: integration day
- The outing that opens each cohort, before the first class.
About 1 cent: materials, communication and partner meetings
- Notebooks, markers, printing, posters. It is the smallest item, not the largest.
Read it backwards: almost all the money is people's time and food. There is no building to pay for, no expensive software licence, no office in the capital.
What each amount buys
50 dollars
- Two and a half weeks of one student's food. Food costs about 20 dollars a week per person.
150 dollars
- One student's trade teacher: the share of the three teachers' salaries that corresponds to each place for the twelve weeks.
240 dollars
- One student's food for the twelve weeks.
500 dollars
- A little over half a place: 54%.
920 dollars
- A full place, from the first week to graduation.
33,000 dollars
- A whole cohort: 36 students across three specialisations.
Two donations of 500 pay for a full place, with a little left over for the next one. A monthly donation of 80 dollars pays for one place a year.
What money does not buy
The cost per student is low for what it includes, and there is a reason: a good part of the programme is provided by partners who do not charge.
Sienna Village provides the campus, with a restaurant and an eco-lodge where practice happens with real customers. More than 15 businesses in Las Terrenas take interns three days a week for eight weeks. And the teachers are working professionals who give part of their week to teaching.
A donation does not replace any of that. It completes it. It pays the person who corrects, the food that sustains twelve weeks of work, and the day on which a group of strangers becomes a cohort.
How you will know what it was used for
Donors receive quarterly reports with the names, photos and stories of the young people they helped train. And the programme's targets are public: 90% graduation, 90% into work. If a cohort falls short, we will say so as plainly as we say today that 500 dollars is half a place.