One of the founding purposes of the Bolivar Garden was to build community and break down barriers in our school, through vocational learning – learning from others through a hands-on approach. Since the first ideas of a Bolivar Garden started in 2015 it has been imperative that we have never lost site of this goal. To that end, I have had six years of academic classes, not counting the pandemic year, in seven years of running the garden. Students have learnt vocationally, by doing, by asking questions and by solving problems.
Students have learnt valuable research skills as can be evidenced by the nature and quality of their year long monograph projects.
Students have shown leadership in many different ways, from the establishment of a club to sell our fantastic Don Simón Coffee, to the work of Juan Manuel Sanabria and the Global Issues Network (GIN) class to promote the plantation of sweet potato in Cotolengo Old People´s home, which was assisted through the garden, to the formation of a social enterprise, La Colmena, to help small apiarists make a living.
Bolivar Garden Saturdays (BGS) are now a regular school calendar feature with usually between 8 and 10 such sessions a year, one per school month. This has led to firm friendships, greater inter-generational mingling, and in an indirect way the hiring of two of our science teachers, Ryan Evansen and Alejandra Carvajal.
Colegio Bolivar is part of the Tri-Association, The Association of American Schools of Central America, Colombia-Caribbean and Mexico. The Tri-Association has an annual conference at which it presents four prestigous awards: Dr Paul G. Ord Award; The Tri-Association Community Service Award; Margaret Sanders International Schools Scholarship Fund and The Emma Gutierrez Leadership Award.
Given that the Bolivar Garden has been running for over six years, that it is a sustainable project that has an impact on our own and wider community, and that it fulfils the other criteria of the Community Service Award, I decided last year to apply to the award on behalf of all the volunteers, students, parents, administration and staff of the school who have worked to make the project a success.
This is something I had been wanting to apply to before the Covid Pandemic struck, so many of the contacts that were necessary were already in place when we returned in our 6th year of the garden – the 21-22 academic year.
Giselle de La Torre of our communications department was absolutley key in organising Jorge Barney of Zoom DVD to come and record testimonials from members of the Bolivar Garden. Giselle and I worked directly with Jorge to produce the video – link below – that was a requisite for the award. Advice was sought from Dr David Fayad, our curriculum director, and Dr Joseph Nagy, our school director, together with input from Mathilde Guzman, head of community affairs.
The process of putting the video together took over five months in total, from ideas of what we wanted to show, to the filming, producing a storyline and editing it. Jorge and his team at Zoom DVD did a phenomenal job of putting into video what we have been doing in the garden – a link to the video can be found below.
BOLIVAR GARDEN – TRI ASSOCIATION AWARD
A document was produced to support our application, which can be accessed using the following link Tri Association Community Award Application – Bolivar Garden 2022.
On the 20th May 2022 the school received the news that the project had been successful in winning the Community Service Award and that we would be presented with a plaque in recognition of our efforts and a prize of $1000 US towards the project!
On the 29th September 2022, at the 40th Tri-Association Annual Educator´s Conference in Panama City, the school was awarded the Community Service Award. Dr Nagy and I received the award on behalf of the school and the project and gave brief words about the project to the conference of more than 700 educators from across the region.
Later that morning I presented a presentation called the Coffee and the Bees, to almost 40 delegates interested in learning about how the Bolivar Garden had started and where it was moving towards.
The Coffee and the Bees TRI ASSOCIATION red
During the presentation Don Simón Coffee was made for delegates and a raffle for coffee was held with 23 lucky participants winning some small samples of Don Simón.
I would like to thank all the members of the Bolivar Garden, from our BGS volunteers, to my students, staff, teachers and administration that have supported this project over the last seven years. I would like to give special thanks to Mr. Diego Arias for all the assistance he has provided to the garden through his maintenance team and a very special thank you to Don Hugo Guererro, our main gardener, teacher of students, and right-hand man who kept the garden going through the pandemic, has always been on hand to help and give advice and is tireless in helping our garden be as good as it can.
Thank you all so very very much.
Wojtek Waliszewski