Next steps:
During last years, we made several drafts for the building and are in contact with the authorities in what concerns the permissions. Tamera is in a process of changing its official land use plan (a PIER- Plano de Intervenção em Espaços Rurais- Plan of intervention in rural areas). During this time, we are not allowed to build any new buildings on our land. Also not – what we had hoped for- a temporary school building made of building modules. Unfortunately, the county of Odemira cannot put any of the former school buildings, vacant due to the closure of smaller schools, at our disposal. Tamera is finalizing its PIER and we hope that we can soon apply to become an international school, and build it.
Interim solution: Home-schooling
Fortunately, since September 2014 we have found a possibility to accompany the children of the community of Tamera, in the frame of homeschooling. That enables us to already put in practice many elements of the open learning space: with big financial support of parents and friends, we were able to equip the learning space in order to correspond to the needs of all ages until the 9th grade. In this space, the parents, supported by Tamera-based educators and Portuguese educators, accompany the daily learning of the children. Additionally, the children have chosen different Internships and projects that are accompanied by specialists from Tamera and the surroundings.
Finances:
We need your donation! As many independent projects, we finance ourselves through donations from our global network of friends who are passionate about innovative education. We don’t want to raise the parents’ contributions and we want to remain accessible for families with diverse economic backgrounds: we receive monthly donations of an average of 300€/child.
Until now, our school project is mostly financed by parents and by the community of Tamera. Due to the pandemic, these years were financially challenging for the school project in particular and for the Tamera community in general. Currently, we handle a yearly budget of 146.000€, with 80% in salaries to educators and specialists. All community members working in our school project are volunteers and their daily life costs are covered by the community. Including this cost into our budget, it would double to 260.000€. Our income is covered with 66% from the community of Tamera, 30% from the parents and 4% from individual donors from our network.
We want to warmly invite you to join our network of supporters and thank all those who already supported and support us financially!
Networking:
For some time, in Portugal newly dedicated initiatives in the area of education have been emerging. Innovative people, educators, and parents are getting together, new projects emerge and networks are created (for example the Rede da Educação Viva). If you want to know more.
We greet you from the Alentejo of Portugal.
May more and more children in the world be able to keep their joy of learning until their adult age. And may this joy help all of us to establish a future worth living for the next 7 generations.
