Painting the Salon Comunal!

On Thursday, June 24, over 40 volunteers and community members came together to paint the Playa Potrero Community Center. All together, there were 10 Abriendo Mentes team members and A.M. volunteers from Massachusetts, Florida, and Michigan, a tour group of 10 arranged through M.I.T., and over 20 Playa Potrero community members and Abriendo Mentes students. It was a long day of hard work, but very rewarding to see such a huge improvement. We still can’t put into words how thrilled we are that we have finally accomplished one of our main goals for the 2010 Abriendo Mentes year!

The day started at 7am, with only a few setbacks ("how do we open these 5 gallon paint buckets?" and "hmm... stirring paint, didn't realize how important that part was"). But by 8am we were spread around the Salon, everyone with a brush, roller or sponge, paint tray or make shift paint tray in hand. I think I often underestimate how simple concept of team work is, but how it can have such a grand impact. The synergy created between 40+ people working together was amazing. In less than one hour, we had covered over 400 square feet of wall space. As the day continued on, the work pace slowed a bit for practical reasons. We were getting tired, it was getting hot(ter), and we had covered the bottom section of the Salon, leaving the top beams, which were only accessible by ladder. Making it even more challenging, these hard to reach beams were un-treated concrete, which sucked up paint and made for a very tired arm. 8am turned to noon, when our wonderful M.I.T volunteers had to head back to Flamingo for lunch (thank you so much to all of you!!). We powered on from noon until after 5pm, through A.M. classes which we took turns teaching between painting stints. Final touches were finished on Friday and then we celebrated. Now, thanks to the great effort of 40 dedicated, giving people, the town has a fresh, newly painted community center! We cannot thank everyone enough for their generous gift of time and hard work. I stepped back and took a look at the masterpiece at the end of the day on Friday, and tears came to my eyes. This was partially because I was very tired, but mostly because I was thinking of the diverse group of people who joined together to accomplish such a daunting task. Everyone from a middle-aged Nicaraguan immigrant women, a wonderful Costa Rican mother and her 6 year old son, a mid-20's couple from Michigan, devoting two months of their summer to service work in Costa Rica, a mid-30's Geology Professor at M.I.T and a mother and daughter from Tampa, Florida. This was a group who realized that a dedicated team of people working hard together can accomplish great things. I know they will spread this sentiment throughout their travels and experiences; everyone can make an impact, and every effort counts. Muchisimas Gracias!

Abriendo Mentes Goal of 3

3 goals, 3 months, 103 women and children in Playa Potrero need our help.

With 1/3 of the 2010 Abriendo Mentes year successfully completed, we are happy to announce we have officially been accepted as a partner for fiscal sponsorship with the 501 (c)(3) Omprakash Foundation. With this milestone reached, we have set 3 main goals that we are dedicated to accomplishing in the next 3 months.

This is our goal of 3:

• Student material packets
• Improvements to community teaching space
  
• Experiential learning excursions
  

300 people, $10 each, 103 lives touched.

You can help change the future of 103 women and children in Playa Potrero. If 300 people contribute $10 each, we will be able to successfully reach our 3 goals in the next 3 months.

Your $10 will....

• Help us deliver 33 more student packets to the 33 children still lacking basic classroom materials.

• Help fund the improvement of the community center/Abriendo Mentes teaching space in Potrero: cleaning, painting, stuccoing, and closing up the large open windows to keep leaves and dust out.
  

• Help send the students on 3 experiential learning field trips throughout the next year - hike on a volcano and learn about geothermal energy, experience a jungle canopy tour and learn about rain forest conservation and visit a leather back sea turtle nesting site and learn about endangered species.
  

Please forward this information to anyone you think would be interested in helping Abriendo Mentes and the women and children of Playa Potrero.

Want to get to know us better? Take a look at Abriendo Mentes' new "Learn More" tab where you will find testimonials, news and events, student of the week and more.

Friday fiesta day!

This past Friday, we enjoyed a fun afternoon making tissue paper flowers with pipe cleaners and wooden skewers, practicing our colors while working, and as a special treat a piñata to top off the day! We have our new friends Samantha, Trinidad and Paula to thank for providing the supplies, ideas, piñata and candy for the activity. Samantha (7) and Trinidad (5) are traveling through Latin America with their parents and joined us for two weeks in Abriendo Mentes classes. They brought with them new songs, activities and a lesson on Chile to add to the Abriendo Mentes curriculum. Samantha and Trinidad participated in all the regular A.M. Kinder and 1st grade class activities, and even wrote pen pal letters with us to our friends at Esperanza de Cambio in Peru. The A.M. students really enjoyed getting to know two new friends from the US and it was a great opportunity for all the children to interact with a different culture. It was a new opportunity and a wonderful way to continue opening minds.

Abriendo Mentes dental hygiene day!

Thanks to the donations of Dr. Jasper Lewis Dentistry and Laura Dominy from Greenville, NC, as well as the help of Dr. Anwar Gazel of Costa Rica, we were able to have our first official dental hygiene day on May 11th! Dr. Gazel came from Playa Grande to teach good dental hygiene practices, and talk about how we can protect our teeth. After a rousing and involved discussion, we had a little oral test in order to win toothbrushes, toothpaste and tooth fairy boxes, all donated by Dr. Lewis and sent by Laura from North Carolina. Very cool way for a dentist office so far away to make a huge impact in a rural village in Guanacaste. The children were thrilled with their new toothbrushes, and hopefully, with the lesson Dr. Gazel gave yesterday, they are all brushing their teeth right now (the correct way of course, 1-2-3-4-5). The highlight of the lesson was when Estiven gave the candid answer to Dr. Gazel's question of "What happens if we don't take care of our grown-up teeth and they fall out?" as "You just buy new ones, or if not you will just be a toothless old man." Always the class clown. Another fun fact we learned, the tooth fairy in Costa Rica is actually called Miguel the Mouse. Interesting, fun, entertaining. All in all a great educational day! Thanks again to everyone who made this day possible.

"K" is for kite

What better way to teach the letter "K" than to make kites in class? Yesterday the Kinder and 1st grade class had a blast using colored paper, wooden skewers and string to make their own kites. And the best part, they actually flew! Granted, it was raining outside so we "flew" them around the Salon, but it was still a lot of fun. The kids are learning more vocabulary everyday, with our focus on one letter a week, as well as the school curriculum - which includes body parts, colors and numbers this unit. It is great to see their minds at work and their creativity growing at the same time. Now we just have to think of something to make for the letter "L". Any suggestions?

The first few months of 2010

It has been an amazing and busy first three months of 2010 - 7 volunteers, 2 field trips, 1 parade, 1 ice-cream party, a web-site launch and countless art projects. Needless to say, it has been a very successful year so far. We wanted to take a moment to re-cap the past few months and make sure we give many thanks and credit to all of our wonderful volunteers who donated one of the most important resources - time. Alex Strecker, our first volunteer arrived in January and helped us kick off our very first day of classes in 2010. Shortly after Maggie Roberts arrived for 9 weeks followed by Morgen and Callan Burzynski for one month. With their help, we were able to launch our website, raise funds to take the children on their first field trip out of Potrero and set up a whole new system for integrating creative arts into the classroom. We were also thrilled to have Sarah Littlefield travel from Ohio to do a week-long workshop with our adult students called "The Story Literacy Project". Sarah documented the lives of our adult women students through pictures and stories. The end result will be a story book in English about the lives of each student. Muchas Gracias to all!

Next up? A dental hygiene class for all the children. Thanks to Laura Dominy for sending 70 toothbrushes and 40 tubes of toothpaste along with coloring sheets, and instructions for good dental hygiene. We are planning to have a local Dentist come and teach the class for us. We also hope to plan another learning excursion to Rincon de la Vieja National Park for a hike on a volcano and lesson on conservation. Stay tuned!

Angelina's Restaurant Field Trip

Angelina’s Restaurant, in nearby Flamingo, invited us to bring some students for a visit. Chef Joe showed us all how pizzas are made and let us choose toppings for our lunch! He also showed us how the big pizza oven works. We drank Coca Cola from old fashioned glass bottles, and had all the pizza we could eat. Then, we got to take a tour of the kitchen. The kids had such a great time eating and learning the different pizza toppings… Ham was definitely their favorite! Abriendo Mentes is so happy to have such nice friends within the community to allow us to bring the children for this wonderful treat. A big thank you from everyone, the pizza was amazing and we all had a lot of fun!