Our Story
This Is Our Home.
It Has Been for a While.
We didn't come to the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica to run a programme. We came to live. The programme grew from that.
Why Cacao Coast Classroom Exists
Cacao Coast Classroom was built from something simple: a belief that children learn best when they're genuinely inside a place, not observing it from a safe distance, not receiving a curated version of it, but actually inside it. Learning from the people who live and work there. Eating with them. Getting their hands in the soil.
Claire and Sam have called the Caribbean coast home for years. Their connections here, to Indigenous communities, to local educators, to the rhythms of this particular place, are not assets assembled for a programme. They are simply the texture of daily life. That's what we offer families who join us: access to the real thing.
Who We Are
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Claire
A mother of three, Claire has spent years inside alternative education, forest schools, Montessori co-ops, and approaches inspired by Waldorf Steiner and Charlotte Mason. She is trained in the foundations of polyvagal theory and somatic parts work, and has a deep interest in somatic therapies.
She believes that children cannot learn until they feel safe. That belief shapes everything, how the days are paced, how new experiences are introduced, how the three-week arc is built.
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Sam is a designer, a mother, and someone who has always been drawn to the edges of conventional education. She is a long-time advocate for children who think differently. She has built real relationships in this community over decades, and that trust shapes everything she creates. It shows in the way the programme is held. She has a deep interest in interpersonal neurobiology and a careful awareness of what it means to hold space for vulnerable nervous systems. That understanding shapes how she thinks about what children need and what she builds around them. The days at Cacao Coast Classroom are paced, considered and intentional. Nothing happens by accident.
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Susana has been part of this coast for over forty years — arriving first as a Peace Corps volunteer, staying because this place got into her bones. A conservationist and educator, she has spent her career doing the thing she loves most: helping children and adults slow down long enough to actually see the natural world around them. Her expertise is deep. Her presence is deeper.
We are not a holiday or a tour. This is an immersive, structured learning experience.
We are not a school. Formal curricula don't drive us curiosity does.
We are not a resort or a retreat. Comfort is not the point. Depth is.
We are not for everyone and we say so, gently and honestly.
We are not outsiders running a programme abroad. This is our home and our community.
What We Are Not - and why that matters
Our Philosophy
Every child is seen. No one is extra. From the moment families arrive, the environment we create is one where children feel safe to be both vulnerable and strong to try something hard, to ask the question they'd be embarrassed to ask elsewhere, to discover something about themselves that they couldn't have discovered anywhere else.
We read every application personally. When you hear back, it will be from Claire or Sam because that's just how we do things.
Our Community and Conservation Partners
El Puente sits at the meeting point between the Kekoldi Indigenous Reserve and the wider community of Puerto Viejo a resource centre that has spent years quietly building bridges between worlds. Founded on the belief that resources should flow in both directions, El Puente offers Indigenous families access to food, education and emergency support, while offering visitors and volunteers access to something equally rare a genuine window into Indigenous culture, knowledge and daily life. Our community service days are hosted here, where our children and families work alongside and learn from the people who built and sustain it.
Coral Conservation is a Costa Rican NGO dedicated to the research, education and restoration of the coral reefs of the South Caribbean coast, from Cahuita to Manzanillo. The reefs along this coastline are among the most biologically significant in the region and among the most at risk. Coral Conservation works on beach and sea cleaning, coastal reforestation and scientific research, grounding everything in the belief that protecting the ocean is inseparable from protecting the communities that live beside it. When our children study this coastline, they do so alongside an organisation for whom that work is not a programme, it is a life's work.
The southern Caribbean coast is one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in Central America and one of the most powerful. Caribbean Guard exists to change the relationship between this community and the ocean, training local lifeguards, swim instructors and water safety educators with the goal of keeping the people who live here, and the visitors who come, safe in the water. Founded and led by local community members, their mission is simple and vital: to put water safety in the hands of the community it belongs to. Every programme we run begins with a session led by the Caribbean Guard team because this knowledge is not optional here.
The Sloth Conservation Foundation works to protect sloths in a world that is changing faster than than ever. More than 3,000 sloths are lost in Costa Rica every year, to habitat loss, road collisions and human encroachment. SloCo's response is practical and measurable: trees planted, wildlife bridges installed, sloths monitored in the wild and rainforest reconnected. When our children track sloths through the forest or plant trees to protect sloth habitat, they are contributing to work that is already making a difference real data, real science, real stakes.
After 15 years of successful reintroduction of critically endangered Great Green Macaws into natural habitat, Ara Manzanillo is dedicated to restoring and conserving wild parrot populations in the Caribbean rainforests of Costa Rica. With fewer than 1,000 Great Green Macaws remaining in the world, their work is not conservation in the abstract it is the difference between a species surviving and disappearing. Through their programmes, Ara Manzanillo has successfully reintroduced approximately 120 Great Green Macaws into the wild, boosting the country's population by 40% and the world population by over 10%. Ara Manzanillo When our children visit the release site with Andrew for their art session, they are not visiting a wildlife centre. They are standing inside one of the most significant conservation success stories on this coastline.