Volunteer Monteverde's Cloud Rain Forest School

The Cloud Forest School in Monteverde offers its 205 students a ground-breaking approach to education. The centre is known throughout the small community where it is located, it integrates environmental education through resourceful and experiential means into all aspects of the students lives, It is a lifestyle particular to the Monteverde community and reinforced with the school.

Your role as a volunteer

As a volunteer in the Cloud Forest School, you have the opportunity to work on a multitude of land stewardship projects ranging from reforestation to bio-diesel manufacturing and from gardening to trail maintenance. You will have hands on involvement in the environmental education classes, community outreach programs, and construction and maintenance projects within the school.
You will focus primarily on work within the offices, library, gardens, and on projects in reforestation. Keep in mind that you will be spending the majority of the day doing physical labor in outdoor projects, so come prepared to exert energy and reap the benefits of working for a school whose aim is to make the campus self sustainable.

For volunteers wishing to teach in the classroom, a minimum stay of 3 months is required in order to most effectively work alongside the teachers and with the students. It is our feeling that teaching projects falling short of the 3 month mark are disruptive to the children's education and ultimately do more harm than good.

Mini-Courses

We welcome any talents or expertise you would like to share with the students the school. We encourage volunteers in teaching positions to use it as an opportunity to teach special skills in the form of mini-courses. Past mini-course topics have included Irish Dancing, Art, IT, Music, Introduction to Latin Dance, Yoga and Photography. If you have a skill or talent that you would like to share with the students, please let us know ahead of time so that we can make the appropriate arrangements.

The mini courses are part of electives in the high school and take place on Thursday afternoon. Volunteer can organise sports acivities during lunch recess.

Program Schedule

Project Requirements

You are not required to speak Spanish as a volunteer for the school though 4 hours of Spanish lessons per week are included into the program fee. Since the majority of your work will be done alongside the Land Manager who is native to Costa Rica, it is recommended you have a basic knowledge of the language and use this as an opportunity to practice outside of the classroom.

It is required that all volunteers be at least 18 years old and hold a minimum of a high school degree.

Project Dress Code

For volunteers participating in land stewardship projects, it is recommended that you bring high quality, durable hiking boots as a large part of your day will be dedicated to walking to and from school as well as participating in outdoor manual labor. We also recommend you bring a waterproof raincoat and rain pants and comfortable pants, shorts, and shirts for work. Few dress clothes are needed and are impractical for work you will be doing on the program.

For volunteers working in teaching positions, Warm clothing such as fleece jackets, pants and wool socks are suggested from October-January, as temperatures cool at night.