What began as a week in Costa Rica learning Spanish turned into a commitment to educate local children for Harvard’s Elizabeth Lowell. (Courtesy photo)

All Harvard resident Elizabeth Lowell was looking for was an immersion course in Spanish. What she found changed her life—and the lives of many others—forever.

In 1996, Lowell signed on for a two-week Spanish course in San Jose, Costa Rica, to be followed by a third week in the rural mountain town of Monteverde, which was founded by American Quakers (Lowell had attended a Quaker school in the U.S.). After a visit to the active volcano at Arenal, her car broke down, and she hitchhiked to Monteverde. At dinner that evening, Lowell asked if there was a Quaker school in the community. She learned that there was—and also another school, the Cloud Forest School, set up by local parents because the Quaker school wouldn’t increase the size of its student body and local parents didn’t want to send their children to public school. Founded in 1991, the Cloud Forest School was built on land owned by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and the school had signed a lease/purchase agreement with TNC. At the time of Lowell’s visit the school was faced with raising $300,000 or forfeiting the land and buildings on it. Lowell, a professional fundraising consultant with Raybin Associates in New York City, saw an opportunity to help and immediately volunteered her services. It was, she felt, just “meant to be.”

Other “coincidences” included a volunteer with a Ph.D. in curriculum development, who created the first bilingual curriculum based on the environment, and an American lawyer who was renegotiating the amount of interest charged on the loan. Lowell offered to advise them on the capital campaign to purchase the land and was invited to join the board of the U.S. support group, the Cloud Forest School Foundation. She fell in love with the school, the community, and the country, and now visits at least twice a year, each time carrying school supplies, textbooks, medical supplies, and athletic equipment. When friends accompany her for vacation, or other trustees travel to Costa Rica for board meetings, they are also pressed into service as couriers.

“This is truly an amazing place,” says Lowell. “The school has a huge organic garden, and two years ago, we began a bio-diesel program. Our school buses now run on fuel made right on campus! We are about to install a wind turbine on the upper campus. About 20 percent of the property, which had been cut for pasture, has now been reforested with native species by our students in our land stewardship program. Our students collect the seeds and grow the saplings. Any extras are given away. We have some outdoor classrooms and have created our own trails in the cloud forest. This is just the environmental side; our teachers give their all, so that our kids succeed academically.”

The school added a grade a year, and the first class, all five children, graduated from the Cloud Forest School in 2005. Last year 11 students graduated, and most of them will go on to university in Costa Rica. “There is no sense of entitlement among these youngsters,” says Lowell. “We have students who walked five miles to school every day until transportation could be worked out. One of these kids is spending his 12th-grade year in the Cazenovia, N.Y., high school. A trustee volunteered as a host family; someone else contributed the plane ticket; another person offered the cost of health insurance. This young man is first in his senior class and has just won one of five full scholarships to Sewanee: University of the South. The top student in the ninth grade works three part-time jobs to help support his family. The stories go on and on. These students are determined to succeed. Their families pay as much as a third of their annual income for their children to get a good education.”

Lowell’s fundraising went beyond the land purchase. In 1996 the original building (a coffee plantation owner’s house) and a cow shed (housing the kindergarten and nursery school) were the primary school facilities. Parents of the school children built two new buildings, expanding the school from nursery to fourth grade. Now there is a new nursery school/kindergarten building; a building for the fifth and sixth grades with offices for special education, environmental education, a development coordinator, and admission director; and a campus with five buildings for grades 7 through 11. There is a solar-powered kiosk in the environmental education area, and the school is surrounded by theme gardens (a bat garden, a hummingbird garden, a fruit-eating-bird garden, etc.). The campus also boasts a worm-composting greenhouse.

Lowell is worried about the future of the Cloud Forest School, however. “Monteverde’s economy is based on ecotourism. Ninety-six percent of the 220 students are local—the children of guides, maids, waitstaff, and maintenance personnel whose incomes are derived from ecotourism. Many earn about $15 a day, so 75 percent of the students receive financial aid. The global recession has hit hard. Last year, Costa Rica had a 15 percent inflation rate; this year it is forecast to be 12 percent. The price of rice, a staple of the nation’s diet, doubled last year. Faculty, who earn about $500 a month and must find their own housing, are also pinched by the economic downturn.”

The mission of the Cloud Forest School is to encourage new generations of ecologically aware, bilingual individuals who have the skills and motivation to make environmentally and socially conscious decisions on a local, national, and global scale. “We live in a global community, and the children in Monteverde want to learn and to contribute at all these levels,” said Lowell. “People can help sustain this vision by volunteering at the school, where they can work in the theme gardens, on the forest trails, or in the classroom, and at the same time build friendships that transcend country borders. This is an opportunity to help young people grow and to experience the generosity that we know exists in the United States. I urge people to give what they can to help sustain this vision.”

For more information visit www.cloudforestschool.org.