At the April Woods School in Haiti, graduation followed a season of many service projects, with the community and the children uniting to learn deforestation techniques, solar cooking methods, environmental jewelry making and many other skills. There is no end to the transformation of this little community over the past six months since the school opened, with the habits-of-heart inspiring new skills and a new vision of service.
Girls United students in Liberia felt empowered to see their poetry featured on the United Nations Foundation website in their efforts to prevent childhood marriage in their country. See the link below for more information.
http://www.unfoundation.org/blog/seeing_liberia_through_her_eyes.html
In California, parents from Piru to Tarzana to FCLA South Los Angeles were once again mesmerized by the character growth and achievements of their children at eight different mastery ceremonies. Students integrated grade level themes and aspirations in service projects, showcased at the ceremonies. One ceremony was dedicated to the late FCLA board president Leon Ferguson, who passed away in office this year. He continues to inspire us all.
A new summer school in San Leandro California, a collaboration of FCL, Meridian, LIFT and Kaiser, will focus on diabetes awareness, with students not only improving their own life choices, but advocating a soda tax, honoring community health workers, physicians and farmers’ market founders and making potentially lifesaving changes in their community. Simultaneously, the Rancho Sespe summer school students will launch new projects on Sacrifice, Consideration and Integrity.
In Zambia, 38 educators will train in July, in response to President Kenneth Kaunda’s challenge. Meanwhile, 26 educators have been newly trained this spring in Northern California. They will take their learning to the Navajo reservation, to Ethiopia, to Indonesia, and to various schools and community-based organizations in California. Surveys indicated that 100% of the participants were inspired to give their students a greater sense of vision and purpose. 95% feel better prepared to help students contribute their skills to improve life for others in their communities.
The last of the original alumni club members is moving on to university life – congratulations to Sonny Douglas, who is beginning his freshman year at Berkeley in the fall! So FCL will welcome the fresh new faces of the alumni club, formerly from the Full-Circle Learning Academy middle school from South LA. We extend gratitude to the staff and leaders of the Full-Circle Learning Academy for its accomplishments this year and for the past five years. The Leadership Team (Les Strawn, Baktash Aazami, Marisol Rexach, Office Managers Martha Gomez and Patti Olmedo, and afterschool director Antoinette Wright), along with the teachers, worked against great challenges to bring success in the final year of the charter. We also pay tribute to Shanti and Selva Selvakumar, founders of the Nishanth Full-Circle Learning Academy of Chennai India, whose sacrifices over a period of many years brought Full-Circle Learning education and dynamic achievements among the children in an underserved neighborhood in India.
If you are an art teacher looking for ideas, check out volunteer Arlo Gordon’s blog on how to integrate more art into your Full-circle Learning projects.
Hearty thanks to our private pledge donors and general contributors for making all this possible, and especially to EDI/EHG. Thanks also to the Mona Foundation for its financial assistance to Rancho Sespe Summer School and the Tarzana Elementary Habits-of-Heart Club. Thank you to Kaiser for its South Alameda County grant and to First Five of Ventura County for the Piru Preschool grant.
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