FCL Sites Around the World: FCL Alumni Club

Organic growth is a hallmark of Full-Circle Learning projects. Children at the original Los Angeles project where habits-of-heart were introduced tread lightly. They painted flowers on burned out buildings to restore healing to a riot-torn community. They talked about communities and the virtues that build inner strength and outer resiliency. Understanding the trauma some had experienced, their teachers served as patient midwives of transformation. By the end of the first decade, the students attending the program seemed lighthearted by comparison, for many had faced their challenges by leading lives of proactive service since their earliest recollection. They had conducted countless local and global service projects and practiced 56 habits-of-heart by the time they left primary school.

Full-Circle Learning Alumni Club members gathered to write proposals for a Teach Africa project, inspired by the foreign service of some members and by attendance at a UCLA seminar. Four youth are pictured here with a mentor, a parent and a founder.
View Gallery

Through their projects and communications, these elementary-aged children had helped a young girl in Indonesia break the gender barrier so her whole village of girls could attend school. They conducted water treatment campaigns and regularly beaches and visited adopted grandparents at the nursing home and made daily lunches for homeless students at another Full-Circle Learning school. They honored relief organizations and journalists who write about hunger. They offered the county blueprints to make recommendations for environmentally sound public spaces. They sent a quilt and proclamation to the World Bank after 9-11. They learned teamwork at horse camp and traveled overnight to a Yosemite National Park to honor both the indigenous people and the officials who share a commitment to conservation, incorporating dance, poetry, and art in their ceremony. They made solar cookers for co-scientists in Kenya and letters about their convictions that inspired a local movement in Senegal. They sent hundreds of comforting cards to Children’s Hospital patients as well as to children in the refugee camps of Kosovo. At last they each developed a personal dream and a lifelong goal for using their own talents to serve humanity. What would they do as graduates? Some would form an alumni club.

The Full-Circle Learning Alumni Club emerged because these students and their parents decided they did not want their journey together to end. As they scattered to become high achievers in various schools, they incorporated program goals into their weekend activities, their summer mentorship and leadership retreats and, over time, into ambitious local and global service projects. They now hope to disperse and travel to Africa for a three-nation summer of service. Their own words, below, best describe some of their hopes and dreams.

My Desire to Serve: Young Douglas

Under the direction of artist John Paul Thornton, students created original artwork showing the relationship of peace and the environment. Some of their art was displayed at the Nobel Peace Prize Center the following summer. Young Douglas, Melissa Douglas, Kathy Rosales, Leila Middleton, Douglas Rosales and Enya Edwards displayed a polar bear featuring their templates.
View Gallery

I am age 15. I feel inspired to become a pharmaceutical chemist and create cures that are affordable for everyone for big diseases like cancer. The way drugs and health care cost, now people who are rich can survive while everyone else suffers. I will do my best to change this so that everyone can be treated. This is a goal of mine because I feel we are all one family, the family of the human race.

As a Full-Circle Learning Alumni my youth has been rooted in serving others and making the world an environment for everyone to enjoy. In the Full-Circle Learning program itself we would do projects and put on shows to display universal connectedness and give to our global community as well. As an Alumni member we get to put our own ideas in action and make things more personal. I have learned to be moral and have taught others to do the same as well. In the summer of 2008, I volunteered to teach the ways of Full-Circle Learning in Lesotho, Africa. My goal was to inform the children of the small village I was teaching at about academic studies, conflict resolution, humanitarianism, and leadership skills. These basic foundations, although taught within a month, resulted better than most acts of an average public school. [Young instigated this trip before enrolling in high school. He has attended private middle and high schools, on scholarship, while serving in the Alumni Club and on many other activities.]

My Desire to Serve: Kathy Rosales

My name is Kathy Rosales and I am a part of a program called the Full-Circle Learning Alumni Club. I am 15. I have been a part of this program for twelve years, which uses project-based learning to encourage capacity-based learning. My experience with serving and giving back includes various projects. I have raised and sent funds over to schools in Africa to help promote education and essential needs for their community. With the help of my colleagues, we have helped to create images that promote peace and harmony for the world. We have also put together works of art to encourage attention to the relationship between peacemaking and climate change. Our art was housed in the Nobel Peace Prize Center in Oslo Norway in the summer of 2008.

Dance sometimes motivates people to communicate and learn in ways that traditional learning cannot. In addition to my service, I have learned outside skills that have helped my leadership skills in a variety of ways. For example, I help to teach children different kinds of dance forms and styles. I have also begun to take college level classes that have helped enhance my academic skills.

The extent of my desire to serve is unimaginable, because I want to make a change in the world for the days that I am still here. There are other children that are unable to partake in the leisure activities that are available to me. By giving back, I will feel better about myself and about what I have done for the world. Helping others does not take away from my school activities and other hobbies. [Kathy was valedictorian at her middle school.]

My Desire to Serve: Enya Edwards

I am 15 years old and a member of the Human Family. I have been involved in many projects with my alumni group of Full Circle Learning. We have helped young kids in countries around the world such as Kenya , Panama, Java Indonesia, Lesotho and a few others and also in our local community. It is personally rewarding when I am able to change someone’s life in a positive way. Receiving a letter from a someone else saying that we’ve helped her to overcome a challenge, such as being the first girl to go to high school in her village or working towards being the first female doctor in her village makes me realize that what I’m doing is for a good cause. These are a few things that my alumni group and I have been able to accomplish in our many years of working as humanitarians.

Being a part of the Full Circle Learning alumni group has taught me to be aware of what’s going on around me and to appreciate and reach out a helping hand to everyone. I have also learned many different virtues that have helped me to be a better person, one being awareness. Through Full-Circle Learning I have become aware of what’s going around the world and ways that I can help less fortunate people. [In 2008, Enya went to Guyana , South America to “do more work as a humanitarian.”]

My Desire to Serve: Jade Romain

“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.”-Edward Everett Hale.

I strongly believe doing every bit of good I can to make a change that will benefit our world. I have a remarkable desire to serve our world. In my future I will become an anesthesiologist and join the Peace Corps.

The average American has about thirty years longer on this Earth than an African does. Being a young adult who is a humanitarian and wants to become a physician, I know it is my duty to help my peers have a positive frame of mind about any situation thrown at them and talk to them about how we can all keep our bodies healthy and keep our soul in good spirits.

I have a very long history with a non-profit organization, Full Circle Learning. I have been involved with them since I was in second grade and now I am a senior in high school. The teachers have taught children, as well as me, so many virtues that will stick with us for the rest of our lives. Humility and integrity have been my two favorite habits-of-heart since I was seven years old. [Jade, an honors student, volunteers at Cedars Sinai Medical Hospital on weekdays and has traveled abroad to serve each summer.]

My Desire to Serve: Douglas Rosales

My name is Douglas Rosales and I am 16 years old. I have helped the community and the world since the age of 9. I have helped open a school in the Los Angeles area. This school was set up to help children have leadership skills and help resolve conflicts. This school also helps with arts, music and being a better humanitarian to the world. I am involved in the Full-Circle Alumni, which helped open the school. We also helped send a project to Norway where we addressed the issue of global warming. We use many habits-of-hearts to be better humanitarians to the world and to discover ways to contribute for the greater oneness of the human race.

I am also involved in an engineering Saturday school. This helps elementary and middle school students further their quest of knowledge; so they can have more opportunities in the real world. I am also a tap dancer, piano player, drum player, and violinist. In my travels, I plan to make a good impression on all the people I come into contact with and show them a good American citizen who cares. I plan to be a person who they could come to and talk to about life and become more of problem solver and experience a giver. [Douglas, an honors student, has been involved in a number of extracurricular programs and has completed college-level courses.]

My Desire to Serve: Melissa Douglas

I am a Full-Circle Learning Alumni. I am currently eighteen years old and a new high school graduate. As part of the Full Circle Learning Alumni Club, I am an aspiring artist with hopes of helping to teach children in Ethiopia. There is a summer school that I wish to attend and experience next year. I have always enjoyed helping children learn and have enjoyed learning about new countries in return. I believe that this will be a rewarding experience for all of us. While it has occurred to me that Ethiopia is filled with ideas and cultural traditions that are strikingly different and contrast with those of America, I feel that the change will be something that I can come to recognize and accept. I do expect a number of challenges upon my arrival, but that does not stop me from wanting to make a change in the life of a child. [Melissa, currently a freshman at Otis School of Design, serves as a volunteer art and Japanese tutor at the Full-Circle Learning Academy middle school in Los Angeles. Her artwork has been used in a children’s book used in Latin America and the US.]

After an art project with incoming middle school students, the alumni talked about their long-term vision of one generation mentoring the next. They hoped that as other students graduate from their various schools, they too will form alumni clubs and sustain the lasting bonds that can enrich a community through group service and a passion for altruism.