Summer English Camp Starts Tomorrow!!

Summer camp t-shirt design. T-shirts donated by Atlanta printing company owned by the husband of one volunteer.

Summer camp starts tomorrow, Monday, June 24th, but in a different area of town than in the past two years. We are running the camp in our grassroots school in the community of Padre Granero. The camp will run until Friday, Aug. 2nd.

In the past years, we charged a fee for sponsored campers or registered campers to attend camp. We mainly did this because the building we rented was quite expensive, to cover transportation, as well as other odds and ends. This year, since we are doing the camp in an already existing school building, we are not charging the camp fee, but the biggest expense we have to cover is the transportation. It comes out to about $8 per week, per camper. We will bus in 5 campers from the community of Los Dominguez (Eriverto, Miguelina, Milena, Enelbi, and Miguel Angel), and 5 campers from our grassroots school in Muñoz, who will ride with the volunteers each morning. If you are a native English speaker in the Puerto Plata area and would like to help out with camp this summer, please e-mail cambia.mis.estrellas@gmail.com.

We want to invite you to sponsor one of these campers for their six weeks at camp, or to make a donation to the Change My Stars fund in general, which will go toward summer camp or toward the scholarship funds which are ongoing. Stay tuned for weekly updates and pictures!

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Hello Volunteers, Supporters, & Followers! 

We have to announce (although late) that we have shut down the English immersion pre-school and other English education activities that took place in the house on the street 12 de Julio in Puerto Plata. We still have the scholarship program with three students on scholarship. We created this English immersion education program in order to more practically engage foreign volunteers and also to respond to the requests of the general Puerto Plata community who had asked for English lessons from native English speakers throughout the years.

The decision to shut down was based on the lack of local registrations and the high costs of the building we were renting. If we have the opportunity to start this program up again in the future, we will do so in a different part of town with a different approach, and building on top of relationships we have formed and lessons learned throughout this effort. Thank you to those of you who have sponsored a camper, a pre-school student, volunteered, or taught. It has been a blast and hopefully we can start it up again someday! In the meantime, we'll continue with the scholarships. If anyone takes special interest in the English immersion pre-school and would like to dedicate resources toward a wiser and stronger re-start, please write to us at cambia.mis.estrellas@gmail.com.

I never did post the family photo of the boy who was sponsored to go to pre-school. Although the school year ended early for him, he learned and grew so much during the months he attended pre-school! Here is Pedro (Alamson) Toussaint and his mother Etienne.

Lastly, a special thank you to Julienne, Hannah, and Mary Ellen who came and taught in the pre-school this year, as well as Nicole who volunteered with the club, and of course everyone who helped out wtih the summer camp! We will do the English camp this summer but in the grassroots school in Padre Granero. We'll continue to post about scholarships.