Wine Country Times

Seeds of Learning, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Sonoma, has constructed 250 classrooms in Puerto Rico, Mexico, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Part of the mission is to provide cross-cultural experiences for people in North America, including young people who volunteer to help build the classrooms, executive director Annie Bacon group told Wine Country Times.

With travel restrictions during the COVID-19, those efforts, like so many other activities by nonprofit groups, has been on hold, Bacon said. She hopes it can resume by late summer.

“Travel was such a huge part of what we did,” she said. “We’re really missing that.”

Traveling to a new country and learning about the culture is not something that can be duplicated virtually, Bacon said.

“So much of what it powerful about the experience is people getting on the plane and going to Nicaragua,” she said. “It’s the smells and the sounds and mixing concrete and laying bricks. We really haven’t been able to replicate that or find an alternative for it.”

The organization teaches volunteers about the countries they are traveling to, including history, economy and politics.

“But there are a couple of things that surprises people when arrive,” Bacon said. “One is the poverty. The other is the resiliency that the people have there in terms of facing the poverty and living the life that they can to the fullest. It can be pretty awe-inspiring for people and make them reflect a little bit.”

The group will only build classrooms in villages after meeting with the community and securing a promise from the government agrees to provide a paid teacher, Bacon said.

“If everything goes well, and the governments gives us permission to do it, the community needs to come together on a volunteer basis and build the school,” Bacon said. “We provide a construction supervisor. Our staff oversees it. Our volunteers go as well. So all the labor is volunteer.”

The cost to build a typical school with one or two classrooms is only $10,000 to $12,000.

It’s about educating children in the remote villages, and it’s about more, Bacon said.

“It opens the eyes and the hearts of the volunteers,” she said. “They are working alongside someone who lives in a totally different world than they do.”