Education

He’s doing it in a dress!

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Our son, Nate, is a man’s man, never happier than when he’s exploring an underground cave or scaling a rugged mountain.

Nate in cave 2

Nate on mtn 2

In September, he attempted to climb Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. Nasty weather prevented his team from making it to the top so they summited a nearby peak instead and he’s already dreaming of challenging the big one again.

So why am I going to be spending time while we’re together this Christmas modifying a dress to fit him better? So that a little girl in Africa can go to school, that’s why! And you can be a part of it!

Do It In A Dress is an initiative of One Girl, a non-profit organization that gives women and girls living in Sierra Leone access to education. Believe it or not, a little girl born in Sierra Leone is more likely to be sexually assaulted than she is to attend high school!

Do It In A Dress asks participants to challenge themselves to do something… run a half marathon, bungee jump, sky dive, play a team sport, host a barbecue… almost anything, all the while wearing an African schoolgirl dress and raising funds so that a little girl in Sierra Leone can wear one too. $240 is all it takes to give a girl access to education. An educated girl becomes an educated woman – a woman who can change her world!

On February 9, 2013, Nate will be skiing the Canadian Birkebeiner, a 31 km cross country ski marathon, in a dress! The dress is a little tight. It needs some modification to to provide space for a warm layer underneath and to ensure that his arms can move freely while he skis. That’s where I come in.

What can you do to help? Click here to sponsor Nate. Tell your friends and suggest that they donate too. Nate will appreciate it and so will a little girl whose life will be forever changed.

Graduation day!

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Taking a two-year-old and a four-year-old to a university convocation might not seem like the best idea in the world but that’s what we did today. Seven and a half years, one husband and two children after she started working toward her degree, our daughter Melaina graduated from the University of Calgary today! I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more well earned degree and the children were so much a part of the process that it was only fitting that they be there for Mommy’s big moment.

All dressed up and ready to go!

Melaina graduated from high school in 2001 and headed off to college to begin a two year legal assistant program. By early in her second year, she was already fairly certain that she didn’t want to spend her entire life at that career but Melaina isn’t a quitter. She finishes what she starts so finish she did. After graduation she went to work for the Merchant Law Group. At nineteen years of age with little life experience behind her, she found herself handling difficult immigration and residential school cases that she didn’t feel ready to deal with. In January 2005, after a year and a half on the job, she chose to cut back to 30 hours a week at the office and entered university part time.

That fall she became a full time student again. In December of 2006, during her Christmas break from school, she and Aaron were married. Full time studies came to an end when Drew was born in the spring of 2008. In fact, she had to have her final exams deferred when he arrived a little earlier than expected! She wrote them when he was just a week old.

Melaina had planned on graduating that spring but exhaustion brought on by her pregnancy and what was later determined to be an enzyme deficiency had made it impossible for her to carry a full course load that year. When Drew was born she was still a few courses short. Four years later, by taking a night course here and an online course there, she finally completed all the requirements for her degree and today was a day to celebrate!

Melaina’s graduation comes 37 years, almost to the day, since my own. When the graduating class rose to recite their pledge today, all past UofC graduates in attendance were invited to stand and recite it with them. As I did, I thought of the many papers I’d edited for her along the way. Though hers is a Bachelor of Arts and mine a Bachelor of Education, we both majored in English.

Watching one’s child graduate is always a moment of pride but today I was proud of Melaina for more than hanging in there and completing her degree while raising her children. I was also incredibly proud of her for the job that she’s doing with those children. Though today’s program lasted almost two and a half hours, their behaviour was fantastic!

Melaina has no immediate plans for the degree that she’s finally completed. She works as a part time administrative assistant for her church, a job that allows her to work from home. Though she’s a gifted administrator, being Mom is her first priority these days.

  

This morning when Melaina was telling Drew about what we’d be doing today, he told her that someday Mommy, Daddy, Gram and Grandpa would come to his graduation too. I hope so Drew, I really hope so!

Costa Rica postscript

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Can it possibly be over a month since we returned from Costa Rica? Granted, even with its extra day, February was the shortest month of the year but still, where did it go?

Back in November when we booked our vacation, I noticed an optional $10 per person “help fix our school” charge on the invoice. Considering the amount that we were spending for a fairly luxurious holiday, that seemed little enough to give back to the people of our host country so I paid the amount in full. I couldn’t help wondering about that school though. I emailed our travel agent and asked her if it was located in or near one of the communities that we’d be visiting and if so, whether it would be possible or appropriate for us to take some school supplies with us that we could donate.

“It is absolutely possible and appropriate — and so refreshing, you’d be surprised by the number of people who complain about that $10 and don’t want to donate even that,” she told us. She went on to tell us that the school is located just a few minutes off the main road in La Fortuna and that if we wanted, someone from the tour company that would be providing our zipline and waterfall tours would take us there. We decided that that would be a good idea since we don’t speak Spanish and might have a difficult time explaining why we were there if we went on our own.

We always travel light. In fact, we didn’t even take the full allowable amount of baggage when we flew to Japan to teach for a year. Taking an extra backpack on this trip would be no problem at all. I found a bright red almost new one at our local thrift store. I think it cost me a dollar!

Then began the fun of filling it. I didn’t keep track of how much we spent but most of our purchases were made at bargain stores like Dollarama so it really wasn’t a lot. First we bought the basics: pens, pencils, rulers, erasers, pencil crayons and glue sticks. Schools always need paper so in went a package of plain white photocopier paper and a couple of packages of multi-coloured construction paper. There was still space so we started to think of some of the fun things that teachers and children might use. A big bag of colourful balloons didn’t take up much room. Neither did a couple of packages of brightly coloured pipe cleaners. Little nooks and crannies were filled with packages of paper clips, elastic bands and post it notes. Last but not least, in went a small foam ball painted to look like a world globe. I even checked to make sure that Costa Rica and Canada were both clearly marked!

The red backpack flew as one of our carry-ons and travelled around the country with us until we reached La Fortuna. That’s when we learned that we wouldn’t be able to visit the school after all! We had arrived at vacation time. The children wouldn’t be back in school until late February but Ericka from Sunset Tours met us at our hotel, took custody of the backpack and promised to deliver it for us. Today an email arrived with these pictures!

   

Education is valued in Costa Rica and the literacy rate is high but like much of the infrastructure, the school system has been in a slow and steady state of decay for decades. Poverty isn’t as rampant as it is in many parts of the world but the gap between the rich and the poor has been widening for years. Tourism has become one of the country’s major sources of income and we were more than happy to be able to share with the school children of La Fortuna just a bit of what we’ve been blessed with.

Photos by Ericka Chavarria