Updates from Guasmo and Flor

We've been busy here at Starfish over the past few months, including celebrations for Navidad, vacacionales, community service projects (Melanie P's project was featured on our blog a few weeks ago!), and now our high school seniors are preparing for their graduation, which is only a month away!

Vacacionales - Due to schools altering their schedules because of the weather brought by El Niño, we have altered our format and structure of vacacionales. On Monday and Wednesday of our vacacionales, we implemented academic reinforcement (tutoring, study sessions) and on Tuesdays and Thursdays we introduced clubs! Our choices for clubs include: Manualiadades (Crafts), Dance, Community Service, Sports & Theater.


Our scholars enjoy their new Sports club on Tuesday's and Thursday's (we all know how much they love to play with la pelota, so our Sports club has gained quite the popularity).

As part of our Community Service club, our scholars brainstormed and together, created this definition for community service:

• helping others 
• uniting as one so we can achieve something greater 
• collaborating with one another 
• working as a team 
• everyone striving for one common goal, or objective 

After creating our definition of community service, our scholars chose projects based on the needs in the community.  Throughout the month, they are completing their projects, with results to be presented at our open house during the last week of February!


Our scholars discuss with each other their plans for their community service project. 

Community Service club participant Juliana delivers her "Random Act of Kindness" to Starfish volunteer Cristhian.

Our students prepare for their debate, working on skills such as logic, problem solving, and communication, as part of their after school activities!


In addition to our new extracurricular options, long-term Starfish volunteer and Program Advisor Sanchia along with a co-worker are offering high-quality English classes at Starfish- one class to our Educadores and one class to our top 10 scholarship students - equivalent to what they would get at the prestigious school where Sanchia teaches. Classes are being offered at Starfish for free!

And for some exciting news: Felicidades - Congratulations - to Starfish Scholar Angie! As part of the city's "Jóvenes Ejemplares" program, the top students at each high school are rewarded. The third level of prizes is a bus pass, while Angie reached the second level - a brand new laptop! Congratulations on your success and we are extremely proud of all your hard work, Angie.


Angie with her new laptop!