11/25/14

A little bit about Nandayure!



Nandayure is a small mountainous region of about 10,000 people in northwestern Costa Rica. Although located in the province of Guanacaste, home to many of Costa Rica’s most popular tourist beaches, the region of Nandayure lacks both tourist attractions and for that matter any other non-agricultural industry. Most families are either directly or indirectly dependent on the main crops of the region, coffee, oranges, and cattle and hence at the mercy of the ever changing weather.

   
The positive impact of a JumpStart camp on the Nandayure region would be diverse and long lasting. The main goal of the JumpStart camp is to improve the English ability of Costa Rican children about to enter high school. This means that most kids are between 12 and 13 years old, an incredibly formative age in which many lifelong habits, both good and bad, are acquired. Each student will be in a class of 20 students for 3 hours a day, Monday through Friday. By the end of the fourth and final week of camp each student will have had 60 hours of English instruction with a native TEFL trained English speaker. If given the opportunity to start another camp in Nandayure the camp of 20 students would have 3 native English teachers. The critical aspect of this camp is while all high school students in Costa Rica study English, only about half actually study it in elementary school. This creates a gap between students entering high school with a solid foundation in English and those entering without the slightest knowledge of English. As a high school English teacher I have personally witnessed the frustration and lack of confidence experienced by students who did not previously study English, especially when they compare themselves to their peers, some of whom have studied English since kindergarten. These frustrated students are already at risk students, the fact that they came from a community that is too poor to afford an elementary school English teacher means that most of the students themselves live in poverty. As they become more disinterested and disenfranchised in school they are much more likely to drop out of the educational system without a diploma and are then destined to spend the rest of their lives working menial jobs for little pay.


    Once at high school, English becomes even more important as most students in the region go to a technical high school in which they can study tourist related trades such as (what do they study there? TR) While as a whole young people in Costa Rica are experiencing an unemployment rate of 22%, one of the highest in Latin America, jobs for English speakers are abundant. In fact, many employers are now starting to post job openings in English in the newspapers in order to make sure only English speakers apply. With English, students can then choose a wide range of jobs, whether it be in the tourist industry such as a waiter or guide, or in the burgeoning call center industry prevalent in Costa Rica. If they pass the final high school exam, of which the English section is the most commonly failed subject, they can get scholarships to go to a university. In other words, English can break the chain of poverty that they might have thought themselves destined to continue. 


  JumpStart camps are meant to give their students a solid understanding of English and thus let them start high school at the same level as their other peers. I personally did a camp last year in Nandayure. I had an incredible mix of students who for some reason or another desperately needed to attend this camp. There were some students who came from very remote homes who never had access to English education, such as the twins Alexander and Alejandro who have to walk 45 minutes to get to the nearest road and went to an elementary school of only 9 students. There were two other students, Alex and Wilber, who had experience with English but are mentally retarded and needed a basic review of the concepts they learned at school, and finally, a neighbor of mine, Angelica. She comes from an extremely poor family. Her father is an illiterate alcoholic farmer and can’t count past 100. Her family, including her 3 brothers and sister, subsist on almost only the food they can grow. As my neighbors for over a year, I have never seen the kids buy any candy, soda, chips, or anything else most kids in town buy. I have only seen the mother buy rice and laundry detergent. I taught Angelica the year before the camp and saw that she was having a hard time in school, especially suffering from low esteem. She went through a major growths pert, becoming very tall but very thin. She was often bullied at school being called “ugly”, “stupid”, and “clumsy” and I was told by her mom that she had anger and self harm issues at home. While I could stop the bullying of her in my class, other teachers had an apathetic attitude towards bullying of any kind and did not intervene on any bullying unless it became overtly violent. Although she studied English in elementary school her knowledge of such was very low. In the beginning of my camp she was still bullied and so I decided to do a bullying discussion at the camp, something promoted and common in all JumpStart camps. I firmly stated that if I see any bullying in or outside the classroom I would then write a note detailing the incident to their parents and the parents would need to sign this note in order for the child to return to camp. If I caught them doing it again then they were immediately kicked out of camp, no questions asked. For the rest of the camp I only caught one student bullying and after her parents signed the note she stopped bullying completely. I then saw Angelica’s confidence increase. I remember being ecstatic seeing her return from recess smiling, out of breath and tired because it meant she was actually playing tag with the other students and not sitting in the corner by herself. She became good friends with another shy girl named Maria and her English also improved. She went from only responding to memorized sentences such as “How are you?” “I’m fine.” To actually creating complex sentences such as “My favorite food is pizza, what is your mom’s favorite food?”. As her English teacher in high school, I have seen her make many new friends and actively and confidently participate in my classes. Angelica’s experience pretty much sums up my feelings towards JumpStart camps and why I am trying so hard to get the proper funding to do another camp. It’s more than helping students learn English, it gives them a chance to enter high school confident, with a strong sense of self worth and excited about what lays ahead for them after high school graduation. 


    Because JumpStart is a free camp, the students pay nothing to attend and therefore we are dependent on donations in order to do another camp this January. You can sponsor a student for $200 or the whole camp for $4,000, however any amount is greatly appreciated. If you would like to sponsor a student we would love to send you a picture and info about that student and his or her progress throughout the camp.