Project Report
| Jul 5, 2018
Earth Day, World Ocean Day and Tree Day
By Sonya Danchik | Director
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Earth Day Mandala
Dear Supporters,
We are now in our rainy season here in Costa Rica. We have had lots of opportunity for rainy day fun and our garden is thriving - we have enough basil and other herbs to share with the community.
We were also able to purchase a small patch of grass and we plan to transplant small sections in our outdoor play space with the students next year. The students were so excited when we were laying the new grass and have been non-stop playing on it.
We have also recently celebrated Earth Day, World Ocean Day - where we talked and played games to learn about single use plastic and students decided that for all future birthday parties, they would ask friends to bring reusable water bottles and plates.
We also recently celebrated Tree Day - with lots of tree hugging and planting, Environmental Day, International Children's Day and LGBT Pride - which we call Rainbow Day and celebrated on our last day before the Costa Rican half-term. It was so fun to celebrate love, freedom and equality with our own little parade. We all agreed that love is love and rainbows are amazing!
Until Next Time,
Sonya Danchik
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Apr 5, 2018
New adventure playground in the making!
By Sonya Danchik | Project Leader
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Dear Supporters,
We are delighted to share with you photos of our new adventure playground in the making. The students are loving the zipline, tarzan swing and all the other gross motor skill challenges we have been creating for them. We have lots more ideas and we are looking forward to the rainy season to really get going in the garden. The students have been busy planted seeds in gardening class so we will be able to transplant them in June and they have also been getting some good soil and compost ready. We harvested bags of turmeric last week and our other herbs are also doing well. We have also been on top of the constant raking of leaves the dry season brings - to keep snakes out of the playground!
Last month we hosted another service project with True Nature, with a guest children's yoga teacher - which was super fun. We also worked in the garden and made a positive intentions mobile from recycled materials - which now hangs in a tree in the playground. All our sponsored students at Futuro Verde are doing really well and we are getting lots of positive feed back from students, parents and teachers - which really keeps us motivated to continue growing our education project here in Mal Pais.
We also have some new students at Only Love ELC and hope to have more scholarship opportunities in the near future. We had an idea to offer spaces to international students visiting for a month or more during the tourist season - the idea is to generate more funds for our scholarship program. The international students pay to attend and their parents know the proceeds go towards another child's education, which is fantastic! This has been successful so far and we hope to continue this feel good initiative.
We are hoping to have a large outdoor community fundraiser in May just before the rains, to help maintain our financial commitments and also as an opportunity to bring the community together and celebrate life.
As always we are so grateful to you all for your interest and support with our project. Together we are the change we hope to see.
Only Love,
Costa Rica, Mal Pais
Futuro Verde
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Jan 8, 2018
Kindergarten Graduation
By Sonya Danchik | Program Manager
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Dear Supporters,
Firstly Happy New Year to you all and a huge thank you for taking an interest in our project!
December is the end of term for students in Costa Rica and we finished the year with our kindergarten graduation. The students were so excited and we had a few fun art projects for them and their parents to enjoy. We bought baseball caps for the students to paint and wear as their graduation hats and then enjoy on the sunny vacation days ahead. Students also painted on recycled wood, self-portraits for their parents to hang at home. We also enjoyed a writing project where students reflected on their growth and thought about their future. We started the day with all our students welcoming the graduates by playing percussion instruments and blowing bubbles and finished the day with a collaboration tea party, full of sweetness to celebrate our sweet graduates and sweet new opportunities.
We have also been very busy with general maintenance and improvements for our upcoming new scholastic year. We are very much looking forward to seeing students enjoy our renewed sand pit and garden area, and also our dirt mound with slides - which the students will plant in gardening class. We have also added meditation to our curriculum, along with our usual yoga and peace practice classes.
We welcome several new full scholarship students and continue to support our existing full scholarship students at Futuro Verde, as well as our commitment to almost 40% of our students receiving partial scholarship. We hope to continue the sustainability of this beautiful little education project and we very much thank you all for your continued support.
We send you all Only Love and hope your new year is full of love, laughter and good health.
With Gratitude,
Mal Pais, Costa Rica
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