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 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.
