Help Us Fund our Eco School in Costa Rica

Dear Supporters, 

The Mal Pais Education Project has had a great start to the year!

In January, we opened our doors at Only Love ELC for another school year. We are pleased to let you all know that we could offer full scholarships to new students as well as our existing students in the program. We could also continue our full scholarship program for students to attend Futuro Verde. This year we were delighted when Futuro Verde also kindly gave one of our graduating students from Only Love a full scholarship.

At the start of the year, we harvested our garden and have plans to build new raised beds as the current ones are now completely rotten. We were also busy painting classrooms and general maintenance and repair. Unfortunately, our playground and trampolines gave way to weather damage and general use and so we had to dismantle them for safety reasons. We were, however, able to salvage plastic slides and some plastic climbing pieces. We also salvaged some parts from the playground playhouses and my husband kindly repaired and reworked them so they could be placed on the ground, they are now in full use with all students enjoying them. We also made a rope walking line with a handline, which is hugely popular and fabulous for gross motor skills. We are now hoping to create a new play space with the salvaged parts and purchase 2 trampolines. A large amount of ground has been donating to the project and we intend to purchase a drainage tube – the idea is to place a large mound of ground on top of the drainage tube to create a play tunnel and then place the salvaged slides on top of the mound and plant grass and flowers to sustain the ground. We also hope to purchase materials to build a tree house and climbing wall.

In other news, Futuro Verde continued this year with a third of the school student body benefiting from either financial aid or full scholarship. Also, while waiting for corporate sponsorship for their capital campaign to build a green school. Futuro Verde are now busy building a music room, science lab and library/computer lab in accordance to regulations as and IB candidate school. New classes for the preschool are being built from a generous donation from a local family. Five classrooms are still tents – but will hopefully become classrooms as finances allow. In the garden at Futuro Verde, new raised beds have been built and a compost area is already in full use. As we are now in our dry season in Costa Rica it gives as plenty of time to prepare our seeds and soil ready for the rainy season. We are figuratively and literally sowing seeds for education.

We were busy last year updating our bilingual curriculum with lots of cross-curricular projects with opportunities for investigation and innovation. We also created a new curriculum for language, math, art, science, world culture physical education – including gymnastics and yoga, traditional dance, gardening and peace practice. We are now seeing the new students engaged and enjoying our new curriculum which makes all the extra effort so worthwhile.

Costa Rica’s, rich biodiversity offers us the blueprints to live in harmony and balance. Just as one plant offers another shade, we learn that we are all connected and our individual actions influence others and our planet.

By embracing our socially and culturally diverse community, we recognise the importance of global citizens and we are committed to teaching peace, sustainability and respect for all beings.

Thank you for your support! 

Sonya Danchik,
Founder and Director of Only Love ELC
V.P. for Futuro Verde