Youth Activities

Currently, students and staffs of Discovery and Cobble Hill Elementary Schools, on Vancouver Island, are sponsoring children in the Philippines.

A group of students at Sisler High School in Winnipeg have taken on a multi-year commitment to support a daycare facility for aboriginal children in Dupag, a new settlement area, in northern Luzon, Philippines.

IAT has had volunteers from Lester Pearson College join our program in the Philippines. In addition, four co-op students from the University of Victoria and a First Nation's high school student raised funds to travel and spend several months in the Philippines as volunteers with IAT's program. They developed projects and assisted with research on alternative healing practices, genealogy studies, historical background, cultural practices as well as peace initiatives and conflict resolution amongst the Kalinga tribes people.

More recently, two co-op students from Simon Fraser University joined IAT's program as volunteers and conducted research and documented some aspects of the Kalinga culture.

During March of 2010, Rowen Wilson and Heather Taylor, the two youngest members of the volunteer team, led a small group of Costa Rican youth in the construction of a prototype Earthbag Building. Composed of sacking tubes filled with clay and sand, and covered with waterproofing material, these structures are inexpensive and fun to build.

Opportunities are available for individual students, interested in a unique adventure, to spend part of their school year in Costa Rica at IAT's 175-acre eco-village site or with students under IAT’s sponsorship program in the northern Philippines.

Tours for School classes interested in visiting IAT’s projects in the Philippines or Costa Rica can be arranged.

Anyone interested in IAT's programs or joining its youth division is encouraged to contact us at: iat@iatcan.org.