Project Report
| Jan 15, 2019
Love, Laughter and Peace to the World
By Sonya Danchik | Program Manager
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Dear Supporters,
Firstly Happy New Year to you all and thank you for your support and continued interest with our education project.
We ended 2018 with two successful fundraisers, the first being a large group from the USA who visited for a service project and also generously donated to our scholarship fund. We had a lot of fun and got a lot of yard work done as well as a yoga class. The students were very excited to help and meet our guests. We also hiked into the jungle and managed to prune and collect fallen branches to make two living teepees on campus - the students planted black beans at the base, which grew very quickly!
The second was our annual Halloween Fundraiser, which we always open to the whole community. It is known as a green event and even though we had around 200 guests we barely had half a small bag of rubbish. Parents and teachers from Only Love ELC provide the food with a collaboration potluck - with healthy food and Halloween themed baked goods. We always encourage guests to bring reusable water bottles and plates from home - we also provide reusable plates for guests and set up wash centers and compost buckets. Our friends The Kika Boys played all night long and even hosted an open mike for the children to sing and play too! We are so grateful to all the volunteers that made this event possible and such a huge success! We finished the year with our usual informal Kinder graduation and party.
We wish our graduating students a continued love of learning in first grade at Futuro Verde. Next week we start our scholastic calendar for 2019 at Only Love ELC, with lots of new and familiar faces...we look forward to sharing our memories with you all.
Love, laughter and peace to the world.
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Oct 12, 2018
Celebrations for Costa Rica, Mal Pais
By Sonya Danchik | Program Manager
Dear Supporters,
September is always busy and full of celebration here in Costa Rica. September the 9th is Costa Rican Children's Day - typically a day full of games, gifts and candy in all the local schools! Having just finished a learning unit on caring - we thought it would be lovely to reinforce this idea with our students, by asking them to share their preloved toys with other children in our neighboring community of San Isidro. All of our students and parents were so generous and my car was literally stuffed with toys, that were greatly received by over 70 children at a Children's Day party in the community church of San Isidro.
September the 14th we hosted a short presentation, followed by "Running of the Torch" for Independence Day and a lunch picnic with traditional food. We had a really good turn out and a lot of fun.
September the 15th we supported Futuro Verde in Cobano for the Independence Day Parade, which is one of my favorite days here in Costa Rica. The different colours and students strong and loud drumming always reminds me of heartbeats in unison and our core connectivity as humans - which is ironic as the parade is celebrating independence yet the overwhelming feeling is connection. Personally it always makes me feel so inspired and full of hope for the future of the human race.
This month we are looking forward to another service project group coming from True Nature and we have some fun green projects planned. Its always wonderful to meet and work with tourists interesting in community service, this group is a returning group so it will be fun to show them the projects from last time, as well as getting stuck into new projects. The service groups never seem to be afraid of getting dirty and working hard - which is awesome because they could quite as easily be surfing, doing yoga or relaxing on the beach. So thanks to all the amazing people that help make our community learning project a reality.
Only Love!
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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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