A milestone!

Finally, after a long and difficult process, Con Pazion has reached a MILESTONE! 🥂🎉 We are proud and honored to announce that we have recently signed a revolutionary agreement with the Peruvian government (MINEDU) to 'have' and manage the first holistic PUBLIC school of Peru! 🎉 We are immensely honored and grateful for this opportunity.

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A historical happening

Never before in Peruvian history has a non-traditional school been accepted in the public-school system of Peru. There were even legislative changes necessary to make this possible. The agreement that we signed is revolutionary and a big opportunity to offer quality holistic education to disadvantaged children and give them the chance to reach their full potential and break the cycle of poverty.

The school in Manchay with 680 students is officially ‘ours’ now. It’s Con Pazion’s first school. But our goal is that many more Con Pazion schools will follow throughout all Peru in the future. We believe that every child should have the opportunity to access holistic quality education for free.

We are immensely grateful and honored for this unique opportunity, for the support and acceptance of MINEDU, for their trust, their dedication and their unconditional support during this challenging process.

2021

Now that the agreement is signed, we can start creating and implementing our holistic curriculum little by little. Unfortunately, COVID is spreading faster than ever at this moment in Peru and the school is still closed until further notice.

Our students are in contact with their teachers through WhatsApp and follow special classes on tv or radio that the government has developed: Aprendo en casa. (I learn at home)

It’s not ideal because not all our students have access to electricity or phone signal, but at this moment there is no other option. Hopefully things will get better at the end of the year. Until then we try to visit our students at their homes frequently.

Con Pazion is currently focusing on fundraising, coaching and working with the teachers and students in a virtual way, creating our holistic curriculum as well as improving the infrastructure of the school in order to have it ready for when the school is able to open again.

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Although the contract has been signed with the Ministry of Education, it still means that Con Pazion is responsible (also financially) for all the improvements and innovations that we are going to implement. We cannot do this alone. You can support us to improve the quality of the school and give the children better future opportunities.

Only with your support we are able to create a sustainable improvement for our underprivileged students. Please become a monthly donor and we’ll send you personal updates on the children and our work every month. Every donation will be highly appreciated. Thank you for your support and for joining us on this incredible journey!

Reflecting on 2019 and looking ahead to our future

Dear friend,
 
2019 has been more than we could have ever wished for. It was filled with growth, challenges, partnerships, and dreams coming true. Bringing smiles to children’s’ faces and tears of happiness to our own eyes, we realize: this year has been nothing short of magic! THANK YOU for your support.

As this year comes to an end, we are reflecting on all of the milestones we have passed and all of the mountains we have surmounted. Con Pazion has grown tremendously in the minds, hearts, and spirits of community members in Peru and around the world. We have been active in 3 places in Manchay, Lima, and have approximately 600 underprivileged children, their parents, and community members attend weekly holistic workshops in dance, mindfulness, yoga, gardening, environmental education, English, sports, and art. The children have experienced what it means to have a healthy mind, body, and spirit and how to cultivate healthy lifelong habits. We have seen the children grow and thrive, and through them, our own hearts grew tremendously.

Through our community partnerships, we are no longer standing alone. We are thrilled to be holding hands with Lima Yoga, Colegio Villa Per Se, Adidas, Unilever, ANIA, and Ecoladrillos:

• Villa Per Se, our sister school, is supporting us in adapting a holistic curriculum.

• Adidas helped us construct a sports field in our secondary school.

• With Unilever and ANIA, we collaborated to create a TiNi (Tierra de niños), a green classroom.

• The women of Ecoladrillos have become close and heartwarming partners. Our two organizations stand TOGETHER fighting for equality and a better world.

• Ecoladrillos and Protecta Security created colorful benches and planters constructed from over 1800 eco bricks filled with 500 kilos of plastic waste!

• Local artists transformed the walls of our school with mind blowing color and inspiration, painting murals alongside our school students to transform the secondary area into a beautiful oasis in the desert of Manchay.

• The Lima Yoga community has supported us throughout the year, through fundraising yoga classes and growing our community. In partnership with Lima Yoga, we ended the year with a marvelous Christmas celebration at our school. Over 400 children participated in the gratitude ceremony, a yoga class guided by 40 Lima Yoga teachers and Con Pazion volunteers and a chocolatada. It was a magical experience!

Our work could not have been possible without our growing team of strong, resilient, and dedicated volunteers from the USA, The Netherlands, Peru, France, Chile, UK, Germany, Spain, and Australia.

Looking ahead

With the new year coming just around the corner, we have even bigger dreams in our minds and hearts. Our long-term and ultimate goal is to make free, quality education accessible for every child in Peru. The school in Manchay is our pilot project, which will serve as an example for more Con Pazion schools in the future. All schools will serve underprivileged children with holistic education for free. Fighting toward educational equity, underprivileged children will get the chance to reach their full potential and break the cycle of poverty.
 
Working toward our ultimate goal, we have set sub goals for 2020. First and foremost, our goals include:

• Training the 20 teachers at our school in holistic education

• Integrating our holistic methodology into our school

• Transforming the kindergarten and primary school into a haven where we educate whole children: their hands, hearts, and heads.

We strive for a holistic and innovative approach where we are connecting subjects, cultivating awareness, creating critical thinking minds, and fostering an environment of collaboration instead of competition. We hope to emphasize learning by doing and providing hands-on projects and opportunities. In 2020, our overall goal is that:

• Our 350 kindergarten and primary students receive daily quality holistic education for free

• We impact 650 students in finding their own individualized truth and pathways for education through our school and workshops

• 600 parents and community members will receive holistic workshops and will be active in our school community to help and support our children.

We will improve the infrastructure of our school in Manchay. In 2020, we hope to create a water system to provide clean water to children, to construct a comedor where the children consume complete and healthy meals, and to construct a yoga and arts shala so children will have a space to express themselves and grow and share their creativity with our school community. We would like to expand the garden to engage children with the environment around them.

We have big goals and even bigger dreams, and we want to make them a reality. We have come this far with your support, so we would like to extend a big THANK YOU!

We can only go further with your support. As this year comes to an end, we hope that you will continue to join hands with us and support our school and the children of Manchay. We hope you will learn with us, dream with us, and give a part of your heart to our important vision. We hope from the bottom of our hearts, you will take a chance to experience the magic with us at Con Pazion in 2020.
 
Thank you for all of your support in 2019! Merry Christmas and a very, very Happy New Year!
 
With love,

Leonie and the Con Pazion Team

An update from Con Pazion (and how you can help)

Hello from a grey and wintery Lima! But, in spite of the weather,  we have so much exciting and colorful news that'll make it feel like summer again. We've reached a milestone for Con Pazion!

A lot has changed at Con Pazion over the last few months and we are super honored and grateful. We are continuing to work towards our dream of developing a holistic school in Manchay and those dreams are coming true. We are opening the school in a few short months! This school is set out to be revolutionary. We have been working towards this goal for a long time, and now it's almost here. And it's going to be even bigger and more groundbreaking than we could have ever imagined.

Our first Con Pazion school will include a kindergarten, primary and secondary school. We will have 450 students in total, from ages 3 to 17. (Yes, dream big!) At this time, the school that's already established is very basic with no electricity, running water or internet, but we are hopeful that it will continue to grow and service the community. Our plan is to begin implementing our holistic curriculum and methodology from the start and grow it little by little. We are in the final phase of preparations for the opening of our school and cannot wait for the big day to come.

As we continue to work towards this goal and make our school a reality, we are in search of committed volunteers to help us once the school is open to ensure that the implementation is a success. See below for opportunities to help.

How you can help

We are currently looking for committed volunteers who can stay in Peru for a longer period of time to work hands-on at the Con Pazion School once it opens. Our current focus is volunteers for the remainder of 2019, but we are always open to dedicated individuals in the future. If you think the below descriptions is a fit for you, please reach out to us here or email us at info@conpazion.org and let us know why you are a fit and when you are available to join us.

Long-term volunteers requirements:

• Basic knowledge of the Spanish language (preferred)

• Experience with vulnerable children and the ability to work with them in a positive way

• Committed to the position

• Aware of the needs and open-minded attitude

• Resilient

• Strong communication skills

• Hands-on mentality, willingness to step in, as needed

• Strong/solid personality

• Positive attitude and ability to think on your feet

• Strong social skills

• Deep understanding of the developmental needs of initial, primary and secondary school students in limited resource settings

• The strength to work in challenging circumstances and the ability to make the most out of every situation

• Positive and caring attitude and a committed team player

• A vision of making the world a better place, together

• Ability to build constructive classroom communities through the implementation of class meetings and positive approaches/care

Yoga and love on the sands of Manchay

LEONIE’S DREAM. Three years ago, the Dutch-born teacher thought out a plan to help create a better world. Today, she is putting it into practice in the outskirts of Lima.

Leonie van Iersel is a Dutch teacher who came to Peru with a dream: to create the first holistic school in our country, where not only the cognitive aspect would be important, but also the spiritual and moral well-being of the children. Although the building is not yet done, she is already working with the children of Manchay.

The dream started three years ago in Nicaragua. Dutch-born teacher Leonie van Iersel was on a holiday in this beautiful Central American country when the following existentialist questions suddenly came to her: Is there a purpose in human life? If so, what was hers? Leonie spent her holiday pondering these questions. By the time she was back home, the young teacher had already thought out a whole “plan,” but shortly after, she became very ill and spent four months under the effects of morphine. “If I die now, this is all I will ever have done with my life,” she thought.

That same year in April, she arrived in Peru to start working on that same plan she had thought out in Nicaragua. At the heart of this plan was her belief that every single person can do something to help make this a better world. Leonie wanted to do precisely that in this faraway South American country, which she had heard so much about from her mother's Peruvian friend. This is how she arrived in Peru to teach at a Dutch school, but  she soon became aware of the huge gap that existed between the rich and the poor in this country. This reality hit her so hard, that three weeks later she had started volunteering for a religious organization and at a primary school. While she was teaching English to the children of the Manchay hills, they in turn were teaching her the Spanish words for things, food, and colors.

One day, one of the children asked her what sport she practiced and she answered that she had always practiced yoga. At once came the question from the children: “Can you teach us how to practice yoga?“

This is how Leonie started giving yoga lessons during school to the children of this area, in the outskirts of the city. After a few days, she started to notice the changes that the children were experiencing after the yoga sessions. They were not only calmer, but they were also getting along better with each other and feeling more confident. In short, they were happier. The plan she had conceived in Nicaragua was starting to come true.

But, that was just the start. Van Iersel wants to build the first holistic school in Peru and she wants to do that in Manchay. In this kind of school, children would not only have the traditional subjects like language or math as they would in any other school, but they would also be taught about health, the environment, nutrition, etc. And there would be yoga, too, of course.

“We want this to be a school that will empower the children, a place where they can feel safe, where they are taught values and learn to help each other; a place where they are given the chance to reach their full potential and find a way out of poverty,” she says.

Making good progress

In the last couple of months, many other teachers (and not just yoga teachers) have joined Leonie’s project, which she has named Con Pazion, “because we want it to bring peace to the children (“paz” in Spanish) and to teach them about passion and empathy” (“compasión” in Spanish).

This year, the volunteers at Con Pazion will help the children of Manchay with their homework, coach them to make their own organic garden so that they can grow their own vegetables and give them empowerment and yoga classes. Leonie hopes that her dream of having their own building for the holistic school will come true next year. The first of many, as she dreamed a while back when she was in Nicaragua.

HOLISTIC EDUCATION

This involves an integral and creative view of education, an education for life that goes beyond the cognitive aspect and that, without underestimating this, focuses on the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects as well, in order to form integral human beings.

A holistic education is a humanist pedagogical philosophy that centers around the student and is interested in his/her training and development as a person in connection to himself/herself, to others in his/her society and to the planet.

If you want to join Con Pazion, write to info@conpazion.org.