Hello fellow Yalies living in Puerto Rico (and other friends),
I hope all is well with you and that you are enjoying the holiday season.

As previously reported, our YASC Puerto Rico 2022 service trip has been postponed due to the new challenges of COVID-19 within the schools of our targeted community, Instituto Nueva Escuela (New School Institute), the non-profit organization whose mission is bringing Montessori education to public schools and supporting the families of enrolled students.

Our planned service tour to Puerto Rico has been postponed, tentatively, to March 4-12, 2023.

The good news is we will be exploring virtual opportunities to service our INE partners this upcoming year until we can return, hopefully, in person in March 2023.

A Virtual Book Club has been proposed for one elementary school, Bernarda Robles de Hevia, in Naranjito, PR via Zoom.

The details are as follows:

o   Classes will be held from 11 AM EST for 1 hour.
o   Classes will meet twice a month from January to May 2022.
o   Each class has a maximum number of 10 students and 3 facilitators.
o   The classes will be conducted in Spanish (keep in mind the age group of 6 to 8 years old to gauge your Spanish proficiency comfort zone – the books will be more picture than text – 1^st and 2^nd Grade level).
o   The projected time commitment monthly is 4-6 hours maximum monthly including planning meetings
o   Pre-planning meetings dates are projected for the week of January 10 for a 1 hour Zoom session

We are looking for 5 facilitators for the pilot program that is targeted to start after January 17, 2022.

Please provide your tentative availability to participate each month based on the days below.

Tuesdays             1^st           2^nd          3^rd          4^th           Week
Thursdays            1^st           2^nd          3^rd          4^th           Week

Example: “I can work the 1^st and 3^rd Tuesday of each month” or “I can work the 2^nd and 4^th Thursday…”

Obviously,  more information will be provided shortly as we finalize the specific books that will address the topics the students and teachers have decided upon based on their exploratory meetings in the past three months.  The desired topics are animals and biology.

Please contact me if you have any questions and thank you for your interest in this service project.

Sincerely,

Andrew Burgie ‘87
Assistant Research Scientist, Industrial Hygienist, and Adjunct Professor
NYU School of Global Public Health
New York, NY 10003