Final Update on Christmas Toy Donations

Thank you all so much for all of your efforts and donations for the preschool in La Pintana. The presents were a huge success. And YOU were a huge success! Not only did we collect enough donations for every single one of the children at the school (that's 300 children!), we also have a large amount of stuffed animals leftover that we will be sharing with the local Marines for their Toys for Tots program. PLUS, with the monetary donations we received, we were able to give the school enough money to purchase tarps needed to cover their main playground area for the summer!

Thank you again, from everyone who donated and everyone who helped collect donations, to those who donated for the tarps, and to the kind soul who gave me tape to finish wrapping presents when all of the stores were closed on Sunday!

For anyone who would like join in and become more involved with this preschool, we will meet again after the holidays. Please let me know at JMSjulie@aol.com if you would like more information and I will add you to our contact list.

And please enjoy the pictures below!

Collecting Holiday Donations for the Montessori Preschool in La Pintana

I would like to thank all of you so much on all of the wonderful feedback and support we have received regarding the Montessori Preschool in La Pintana. Currently we are preparing for their Holiday Santa Party and Santa DESPERATELY NEEDS YOUR HELP!

We are trying to collect "like-new" stuffed animals for the 3 and under crowd, and "new" toys for the children ages 3-6. Yes, that's right, this extremely ambitious undertaking will amount to 175 stuffed animals and 135 toys to collect before Christmas! These will be the presents that Santa hands out to the children when he visits the school.

Under 3 Age Group: Please bring in any "like-new" small stuffed animals to donate! (Parents, this is an excellent time to clean out that beanie baby collection or get rid of extra stuffed animals to make room for new Christmas toys!) We ask that all stuffed animals be clean and in very good condition. Please not too large, we need them to fit in Santa's bag! We have already received a few items, but we still need 165 MORE stuffed animals!

Age 3-6 Group: Please bring in "new", in-package toys that are age-appropriate. Please bring them unwrapped, and we ask that the price limit for each toy be no more than 5-10mil ($10-$20US) per present. Please consider "adopting" more than one child so that we can quickly reach our goal. We have been offered help in this by the Montessori preschool in La Dehesa that many of our children attend, which means we need to raise just approximately 30 female presents and 30 male presents on our own.

If you could please bring these donations in as soon as possible, so that we can get an idea of how we're doing and where we need to increase our efforts. We have only a few weeks until Santa plans to make his trip down to Chile to visit the school!

Thanks so much for all of your assistance! If you have any questions, please contact Julie Mendez at JMSjulie@aol.com.

October Update and a Call for More Volunteers!

by Julie Mendez

This past Wednesday morning, I once again visited the “El Jardin Infantil El Roble La Pintana” to drop off more donated items to the school. I was so excited to see the changes and improvements the school has made, even since my last visit in May.

As a refresher, several International spouses began working with this Montessori preschool in the La Pintana barrio a year ago. La Pintana is a low income neighborhood of Santiago. The school was built and is funded by the Chilean government; but unfortunately that funding covers only the barest of necessities. The school is very popular: 296 children ages 0-6 attend for free with 200 more children on a wait list; school hours were extended to 7pm in April allowing both parents to work full-time; and three nutritious meals are served to the children each day, which for some children might be the only full meals they receive.

When we began working with the school last year, the school was brand new and bare, and children sat in empty classrooms. Since then, we’ve worked to collect toys, playground equipment, books and more. We also decorated a breastfeeding room with comfortable couches and artwork and organized a seminar by a lactation consultant.

I arrived this Wednesday morning while the school was in the middle of their week-long Kermese festival. The halls were decorated with the children’s beautiful artwork, and many classrooms took advantage of the wonderful weather and were meeting outdoors. It was so much fun to recognize many of the donated toys in use in the classrooms and the playground area. A little boy even serenaded me with the only English he knew – a song about the names of colors in both Spanish in English.

As I mentioned, the school has worked very hard on improvements in the past year and has made great strides in the past few months. The parents of the school have recently raised money to purchase curtain material for the second floor classroom windows and are working on raising money for the lower level classrooms. The administration is encouraging this involvement, believing it will foster “ownership” of the school by the local community. The school has also been able to purchase tarps to cover the “back yard” of a few of the older classrooms, allowing the kids to play in the shade.

We would like to continue the work we are doing with the Jardin Infantil El Roble La Pintana and welcome all of you to join in. Do you have children, or just have a love for children? Or are you one of those lucky people that always knows where to get the best deals and prices? Please join us for coffee at Julie Mendez’s residence on Thursday, November 5th at 10am, where we will host our next planning meeting.

Our upcoming projects include purchasing tarps to cover the playground so the children can play outside during the hot summer months. We are also going to need a lot of help with the annual Christmas party (especially a Santa!) and organizing the gifts for the children.

The school continues to need assistance with their grounds. Is anyone out there really experienced with landscaping?

They are also in great need of specific Montessori classroom materials. There are funding possibilities where we could apply for a grant to purchase these supplies, but it would be very helpful to have some volunteers with preschool education experience to advise us, as well as anyone with experience dealing with grant-writing.

There are number of minor needs as well. For example, the administrator told me that their garbage cans are constantly stolen when they put the garbage out, and are now down to just one garbage can for the entire school!

Finally, it is my personal dream to create a library for the school, which will require organizing a fundraiser for books for the children and for building the bookshelves.

We could also use a few fluent Spanish speakers to help us work with the school, as the administrators speak little English. In short, we are happy to accept help from anyone and everyone! If you cannot attend but would still like to participate, please just let me know and I will be happy to fill you in.

May Update

We would like to thank everyone who has donated toys and other items to the Montessori Preschool, El Roble La Pintana. We can attest that your donations have been distributed throughout the school and are being put to good use by all of the children!

Recently a group of volunteers went back with yet another full SUV load of toys, books and more for the school. We were able to view the great progress the school has made since opening in September.

The school is bustling with activity and great efforts are being made through community outreach programs at the school. A local health center inoculated all the children the week before we visited, and other health initiatives are planned in the future. The parents are organizing themselves and getting more involved. Some basic landscaping has been completed, including a tree planting ceremony with the Mapuche tribe, in an effort to teach the children about respecting their environment. The school has even lengthened their hours to last until 7pm, to accommodate the many working parents. The atmosphere is very enthusiastic and eager to continue these developments!

But, of course there are still great needs at the school.

Our next major project for the school will be to purchase material for curtains for every classroom. Currently there are none, and the hope is that these curtains will not only add some color to the rooms, but also conserve heat. If you would like to “adopt a room” for this initiative or otherwise donate any amount of money towards this project, it would be much appreciated.

Outside, we would like to assist them with their landscaping efforts. The school would like to create walking paths in the gardens and plant additional plants next spring. For this we will need to purchase gravel and larger edging rocks. They are also looking for six simple awnings to put outside each of the older children’s classrooms, providing the children some much needed shade to play in during the summer heat. We are hoping to find and purchase these awnings now off-season, hopefully finding a better price.

The school is also in need of a few changing table pads for the changing room for babies, rugs for the floors in the classrooms of the older children, and a laminating machine. They plan to use the laminating machine to create their own education materials (such as flashcards, etc). Several of our volunteers are planning other education materials projects that we can create to assist each classroom as well.

If you happen to be leaving this transfer season, we continue to accept donations of toys in good condition with “educational play value”, picture books (and would LOVE any books in Spanish), dress-up clothes, puzzles, you name it. The children in this school range from ages 0-6.

If you would like to get even more involved – by collecting donations, doing a little bit of labor, or helping us run down the best deals on particular products, we’d appreciate it. Or if one of the above projects interest you and you’d like to take charge in that area, we’d love your participation.

And as you can see, we’re not lacking ideas – just funds! If you have any ideas on ideas for fundraising or would like to donate to our efforts, please contact Julie Mendez at JMSjulie@aol.com for more information.