One of the things we are doing in Barichara is creating a funding ecosystem for our bioregion that includes a focus on regenerative education. This is what our Regenerative Education Fund is designed to support for the long term.
Yesterday we had a meeting about how to mobilize resources for our new Waldorf School Sueños del Bosque -- where we are exploring how to separate the way teachers are supported financially from the enrollment of students. Throughout my life, I have seen many different models of alternative education. And I have also seen how debt or financial pressure can skew a beautiful social mission in the practice of trying to secure funding.
We have taken the stance that our teachers should be paid well. They are high quality, well trained, and deeply valuable to our community. We also take the stance that the pedagogy of giving each child the personal attention they need is more important to the functioning of our school than the size of our enrollment.
This creates a tension because normally schools will seek to increase student enrollments to be able to pay for their teaching staff. We take a very different approach. Focus on hiring excellent teachers. Pay them well. Protect and nurture the quality of learning in the school. Therefore look for diverse ways of bringing in funding to support the teachers that don't depend narrowly on enrollment.
In practical terms, we launched the school with $50,000 in donations to cover the teaching staff salaries for the first year. This took all of the financial pressure away so that we could focus on building school culture, working with the initial families who enrolled their children, and weaving of community interactions so that more people in our territory can benefit from our teachers than what is represented in our first year enrollment.
Now we are raising funds for the second year -- including that we are seeking donations to support our teachers again. And also we are experimenting with many different models of community engagement so that we can diversity the financial flows of this learning ecosystem.
One way we are doing this is to augment our school calendar so that our teachers can offer community programs during the official holidays of mainstream schools. Families enroll their children and this brings in revenue to support our work. It also benefits the community directly through the offerings our teachers provide.
Another way we are doing this is to create special programs for anyone in the world who comes to Barichara -- including a week of outdoor adventure education with rock climbing and rappelling that will take place in October and a community art event we are planning in December.
When you look at the Regenerative Education Fund, you will see that we support many regenerative projects in our territory -- not just the Waldorf school. This enables us to explore many pathways toward financial sustainability without compromising the education that our children receive.
Please share your thoughts about what we are doing. We would love to hear from you!
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