Students are selling ‘friendship bracelets’ crafted in Nicaragua.

Forget Lance Armstrong’s “Live Strong” bracelet.

Bainbridge kids want pulseras de amistad – friendship bracelets.

The kaleidoscopic wristbands are finger-woven by former street kids on Bainbridge’s sister island of Ometepe, Nicaragua.

“The kids are just stoked,” Wilkes third-grade teacher Alice Mendoza said, reporting $2,700 worth sold in two days. “The project sells itself.”

Impoverished Ometepe youths once lived in the streets begging, fighting and sniffing glue to escape harsh realities. Now they live in dorms in a nurturing environment, attend school and counseling to stabilize their lives.

For eight years, Mendoza’s third-grade classes have contributed to the program Sí a la Vida – “Yes to Life” – with a portion of sales from the Ometepe calendar her class makes each year.

The donations have helped Si a la Vida, begun in 1994 by Seattle Quaker Jonathan Roise, build dorms in Managua and on Ometepe.

When a boy finishes his first year of school, the money from bracelet sales will help buy him a bicycle, Mendoza said.

“Help buy a boy a bike” has become the slogan of the pulsera sales, she said. The rest of the money goes to a fund to pay for Ometepe school uniforms, field trips and spending money.

Bainbridge high schoolers visited Ometepe in the spring and brought back bracelets to sell in the U.S.

Mendoza’s husband Carl Lindbloom, a seventh-grade teacher at Woodward Middle School, got the Natural Helper group at Woodward to sell them at lunch. They’ve raised $1,200 already, Mendoza said.

Mendoza then told the Wilkes student council of third- and fourth-graders, who took the idea and ran. This past Thursday and Friday, the students made posters and flyers and sold $2,700 worth of pulseras at lunchtime.

On Wednesday, representatives from Sí a la Vida gave a presentation to students, so that they fully understand the program and how bracelet sales will help.

“The big thing for me is, we live in a very protected community and kids don’t get to see kids in the greater world who don’t have the opportunity they do,” Mendoza said.

To buy a pulsera de amistad for $5, contact Alice Mendoza at Wilkes Elementary School, 780-3008 or amendoza@wednet.bainbridge.edu.