Education Costa Rica Project #5866

Help Us Fund our Eco School in Costa Rica

by Action Change (Formerly GVI Trust)

Project Report | Oct 9, 2017
Only Love for Mal Pais

By Sonya Danchik | Director of Mal Pais Education Project

Firstly, I'm proud to let you all know that Futuro Verde will be an International Baccalaureate World School in 2018, this is really fabulous news for our community and we are absolutely thrilled!

In other news: We celebrated Costa Rica's Independence Day on September 15th - with traditional dancing, running of the torch, an evening lantern parade and a huge parade with local schools in Cobano. The drumming and dancing from the local students is so fantastic to witness and its truly wonderful to see the whole community celebrating together in unity.

At Only Love ELC we have been learning about environment and courage, which has been fun for students and teachers a like. It really is quite easy to feel passionate about the environment when you live in Costa Rica amongst so much rich biodiversity. The students love learning about the environment and have their own great ideas on how to protect our planet.

It has also been very interesting learning with the students about courage and what it really means to be courageous. We have had a lot of hands on lessons and group discussions. We learned that it's O.K. to feel scared. The students showed so much love and support towards each other during the different courage investigation stations - our Only Love philosophy was ever present.

During this current time of global unrest, it gives hope when you look to the children who so easily cross the racial, religious or economic divides we adults have put in place and seem to constantly struggle with. A child just see's another child to laugh and play with and perhaps that is the simple answer to living in harmony and global peace - seeing our similarities and not our differences.

As always, we thank you all for your continued support and interest with our education project.

Only Love

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Jul 26, 2017
Growing and Learning Together

By Sonya Danchik | Director, Only Love ELC

Only Love!

Dear Supporters,

Our last report was very sad to write when we shared the news of one of our staff members home burning to the ground. We are now happy to let you know that we are well on the way with the rebuild and hope to share with you all photos of the finished home in our next report.

News from Only Love ELC

At Only Love ELC, we welcomed new students last month to our scholarship program and hope to keep welcoming students - we currently offer 46% of our student body either full scholarship or financial aid.

We are also now enjoying the Costa Rican green season and although the rain can limit our outdoor classes we are all loving the lush green environment, especially all the butterflies in the garden of flowers we planted last year. With gardening a part of our curriculum, it is wonderful to see the students get excited about planting or learning about the importance of good soil or composting. Our curriculum is centred around constructivism - where students construct knowledge based on their own experiences - so when students start asking real questions about pollution or sustainability and then even at such a young age start implementing ways they can make a difference…it’s a such a great feeling for both students and guides. The word HOPE feels alive!

News from Futuro Verde

At Futuro Verde the secondary students really take the question of “How can we reduce waste to help sustain earth’s resources?” to heart. It’s heart-warming to see teenagers truly passionate and invested in our planet's wellbeing and wanting to make a difference. Just last month FV raised awareness with a “Trashion” fashion show – where students from the whole school designed outfits or accessories made with rubbish. It was an amazing effort from all the students and the show was a great success.

Creating awareness for sustainability or social justice issues is important and we as individuals and collaboratively DO make the difference. We try to make a difference with our education project and even our youngest learners have the capacity to be the change.

With June being the month for the global LGBT community, we always celebrate Rainbow Day at Only Love ELC, because Love, Freedom and Equality are for everyone. Empathy and acceptance are not always a natural trait, but it can be taught, and that is what we aim to do!

Keeping sharing the love where ever you are…we send you love and gratitude for your constant support.

Only Love x

Project Based learning!

Up-cycling Project

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May 4, 2017
Our Students Continue to Grow and Learn!

By Sonya Danchik | Founder and Director

Meditating

Dear Supporters,

Some sad news

Last month our good friend and coworker was given the upsetting news that her home and two others had burned to the ground while she was working. Luckily nobody was harmed in the fire that was caused by a gas leak and during the hottest part of the year, on a day that the town had no water. The families were all literally left with nothing but the clothes they were wearing the day of the fire. We at Education Project Mal Pais are obviously all very preoccupied with fundraising for these families during this very difficult time for them all. We have started project rebuild: which is for locals to donate building supplies and we are also looking for cash donations to help with construction. We have also set up locations for clothing and household donations and food baskets at the local supermarkets. A local hardware store is helping us with a generous reduction for build materials as well as donating some building supplies. But building three homes, although simple in design - will be costly. But not impossible! We have learned through experience with our education project that with collaboration and by working together, everything is possible.

News from our school

Only Love Early Learning Center just celebrated Earth Day with classes on pollution awareness and sustainable living. We all learned about solutions to keep our planet green and clean for all living beings with fun hands-on projects and lots of student participation, including making a human mandala in yoga class. We have also been getting the garden ready to start gardening classes and look forward to growing and learning about the importance of composting and gardening with the students.

We have visited lots of new places in our world culture classes including Tibet, where we meditated and all made prayer flags to send love out to the world, Argentina where we learned to Tango with a "feet's" on activity taught by our friend and parent Salvador, from Argentina, and most recently the Netherlands for Kings Day.

We are also getting great results with our math and phonics program, it truly is a joy to hear a student read or count for the first time and especially in two languages! We also recently celebrated International Book Day - all students and teachers dressed as their favourite character's from books and teachers read their favourite stories to all the students.

We are also noticing that students are now solving playground conflicts by using skills learned during peace practice - which just melts our hearts!

May we all strive to live in a green and peaceful world! Much love to you all and again thank you for your continued support.

With Gratitude,
Only Love

The remains of the family's home

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