Supporting Kids in Poverty (SKIP)
Trujillo, Perú
- Miles from AGC
- 3,300 miles
- Language spoken
- Spanish
- What we have in common
- A commitment to serving the whole child, inquiry, risk-taking
SKIP, Supporting Kids in Poverty, (formerly Supporting Kids in Peru) is a full service organization that, in addition to providing educational opportunities for students, offers community support, social services and support for small businesses. SKIP director Liz Wilson met Ms. Fyffe, one of AGC’s Dual Language teachers through the international volunteer organization, Omprakash. While preparing to launch the Dual Language program, Ms. Fyffe approached SKIP with a proposal: to foster international cooperation and understanding while working on language acquisition.
The friendly Kindergarteners share artwork and videos. The students are working towards a pen-pal relationship, which will provide AGC Dual Language students with a diversity of native language conversation partners and bilingual storytelling opportunities. When Liz Wilson came to Chicago in October, she toured AGC and was able to meet her students’ pen pals in Ms. Fyffe and Ms. Rombout’s Dual Language Kindergarten class. In turn, she introduced her students to ours through video conferencing.
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Omprakash International Volunteer Network
Potrero, Costa Rica
- Miles from AGC
- Infinite, 30 countries and counting
- Language(s) spoken
- Many
- What we have in common
- Global mindedness, fostering mutually beneficial international partnerships, fostering individuals to take action in their communities and beyond
Last Summer, four members of the AGC teaching community participated in a “Cross Cultural Conference” of educators, organizers and NGOs. The week long event, hosted by Abriendo Mentes , was a rich exchange of innovative teaching practices, cultural sharing, and reflections on the fascinating world of international volunteerism. The group presented a “day in the life” of AGC to give the audience a taste of our school culture. Participants were taken on a journey from morning yoga, through the blooming garden, on to a tasty made-from-scratch organic lunch, and even a lesson on trees from a sample Unit of Inquiry.
Rather than providing packaged volunteer opportunities, the Omprakash network connects individuals with international grassroots partners. Also present at this conference were representatives from our Sister Organizations in Ladakh, India, Trujillo, Peru, and Antigua, Guatemala!
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Adonai Child Development Centre
Namugoga, Uganda
- Miles from AGC
- 7,729 miles
- Language spoken
- Luganda
- What we have in common
- Garden, solar panels, and a commitment to serving the whole child
A pen pal relationship began in 2010 between AGC students and Adonai students. They have learned about each other’s home, school and communities. Mr. Dan has visited the Adonai center, shared pictures and videos and brought back pictures and videos. The head of the Adonai center, Aloysious Lutwasa visited Chicago in the spring of 2012 and met with AGC students!
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Ladakh Schools
Domkhar, Ladakh, India
- Miles from AGC
- 7,500 miles
- Language spoken
- Ladakhi, a Tibetan dialect
- What we have in common
- An interest in sustainability, farming and gardening to support local health, and the inquiry process of learning
AGC’s Wellness Teacher, Joe Phillips, connected with Cynthia Hunt through Omprakash. Cynthia, originally from Canada, has been living and working in the Himalayas for the past fifteen years developing Health, Inc, an NGO which promotes holistic health and education in the Ladakh region. AGC’s inquisitive fourth graders developed a global partnership project with Health, Inc’s students. They shared videos over Youtube giving virtual tours of their gardens, demonstrated their favorite games, and even explored the heating system at the AGC campus. The students conducted several Skype conversations in real time: Ladakh students waved and said “hello,” and AGC students waved back and said “jullay!”
Cynthia visited AGC in the Winter of 2012, bringing from Ladakh books, snacks and stories of daily life in the harsh environment of the Himalayas. She will return in October of 2012 to start an exciting new project in parallel with her students in Ladakh: a Heritage History unit in which students will interview their elders to discover how life has changed and how those stories compare to their Ladakhi counterparts. In the summer of 2013, Mr. Phillips will lead a small group from Chicago to Ladakh, where they will train Ladakhi teachers in the Inquiry Method of teaching, and work on an upcycled “bottle school.”
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Hug it Forward
Antigua, Guatemala
- Miles from AGC
- 2,685 miles
- Languages spoken
- Spanish, Maya Kaqchikel, English
- What we have in common
- Environmental education, upcycling
In the spring of 2012, a diverse group of AGC ambassadors traveled to Guatemala. Together they represented our students, parents, teachers, and administration.
Consistent with AGC’s mission of environmental sustainability and international mindedness, they embarked upon a service-learning journey to learn about an innovative, eco-construction technology of building a school out of recycled water bottles and inorganic trash, while building cross-cultural friendship with the local community. Hug it Forward utilizes an eco-construction technology of stuffing water bottles with inorganic waste to build out the insulation of a school building.
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