::::One World Nursery School - Volunteering::::

Voluntariado

Spanish Girl

VOLUNTEER INFORMATION
Welcome to One World Nursery School! We are so excited to have you join our team here of volunteers and teachers. This document covers several areas that may be helpful for your trip to Chile as well as answer any questions you may have about volunteering at the school. If you have any additional questions please feel free to contact us.

OVERVIEW
One World Nursery School is a brand new Montessori preschool where (mostly Chilean) children from first potty trained to school age have the opportunity to be exposed to the English language while learning the basic preschool curriculum. We also provide an after-school language tutoring program for older children and summer fun for children who participate in the "English Club".

We are a brand new school that is currently teaching English with fun activities Mondays through Thursdays in the morning and afternoons. The preschool opens March 3! This is very exciting time for us though as you can imagine it is also a real challenge since we have a very tight budget and need all the help we can get for materials and teaching. We are still learning and growing so please bear with us as we continue to get more structured and organized.
Your time here is VERY valuable to us. Thank you!

School Library

CHILE AND VIÑA DEL MAR
Chile is a very diverse country with amazing desert to the north and incredible glaciers, lakes and mountains in the south.

For information on Chile the Lonely Planet has a useful website: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/south_america/chile_and_easter_island/ Also many travelers find the Lonely Planet books as well as Footprint books very helpful in their travels.

Viña del Mar is a beach resort on the coast of Chile located about two hours by bus from Santiago. In the summer, Viña has wonderful warm weather during the day while never getting too hot. It is overcast many days in the morning and the evenings have a nice cool breeze from the ocean so it is important to have a light sweater or jacket for these times.

You can buy everything you need in Viña and it is a very comfortable place to live. Several visitors have commented that it reminds them of San Diego, CA. As far as prices go, Chile is not like other countries in Central or South America, things are not cheap. Expect to pay the same price for things as you do in the US or Europe.

ACCOMODATION
You will be sharing a room in a nice apartment which is only a few blocks from the school and a few more blocks to the beach. Volunteers sign up for cooking and cleaning responsibilities, all sharing the housework equally.

RESPONSIBILITIES
Besides the household community responsibilities for cleaning and cooking mentioned above, as a volunteer you will be in charge of some combination of teaching in the English Club, assisting in the pre-school and working on a particular project depending on your skills and interests. For example one volunteer here is a seamstress and is working on sewing projects while another volunteer who is an engineer is working on our web page. We have had synchronized swimming and video classes just to mention a few past projects. There are many fun projects for you to lead or help with! The English Club is an hour long for each group of children consisting of 30 minutes of working through a computer program and 30 minutes of fun activity where the children can practice their English. The English Club has 2 groups in the morning and 3 groups in the afternoon. Volunteers split their time each day in either a morning or afternoon English Club while using their free time at the school working on their particular project.

LEARNING SPANISH
One World Nursery provides tutoring for Spanish as well as an opportunity to interchange with the Chilean teachers here to pactice your Spanish while they improve their English.

Music Room

DRESS
As a volunteer, you will be representing the school and therefore it is very important that everyone always look neat and clean. The school has a dress code for all volunteers and teachers. Women wear a long-sleeved white blouse and men a white button up shirt. You may want to bring two or three changes as you will be working different days during the week. You can wear nice jeans, pants or a long skirt with your white shirt, whatever feels most comfortable. The same goes for shoes, nice clean and comfortable sandals for the summer and closed shoes for the winter.

In general Chile is more conservative in dress than in the US and Europe though not as much as in the rest of Central and South America. As foreigners, the volunteers are easily identifiable within the community and as such are expected to present themselves professionally both inside and outside of the school.

WHAT TO BRING You can find everything you need here as easily as at home with the one exception being books in English. If you are an avid reader you may want to consider bringing some from home as books here are hard to find in English and very expensive when you do find them. Beyond the white shirts mentioned above, you will want to bring generally conservative clothes a bath/beach towel and your bathing suit. For the men, there is usually an opportunity to join a soccer team in the community as well as there being some good inexpensive gyms nearby for both genders. So bring your gym clothes if that interests you.