Who are our partners?

CELL is currently networking with the following organizations:

Accrediting Partner

Lesley University is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges to offer college credit to students. Lesley is a diverse, coeducational university based in Cambridge, Massachusetts with learning sites in 21 states and in Israel. It has been recognized as one of the “best” in the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings, included in the Princeton Review’s “Best Northeastern Regional Colleges” listings, and recognized in Backpacker Magazine as having one of the top five outdoor education programs. Lesley puts a high value and emphasis on experiential education.

Rural Nicaragua

Iceland Partner

Solheimar is an eco-village in Iceland of about 100 people and is renowned for its international, artistic, and ecological atmosphere.  Solheimar is the first self-sufficient community of its kind in the world, where people with special needs and those without live and work together. Inspired by the theories of Rudolf Steiner, Sólheimar has focused on cultivating the individual and the environmental and was the first community in Scandinavia to practice organic cultivation. During a CELL Iceland semester program, students live in one of the world's most unique eco-villages while also learning about the potential of geothermal energy and hydrogen technology, self-sufficient buildings, renewable energy generated in the community, organic cultivation, production from natural resources, and recycling (see www.solheimar.is). For more information on the CELL Iceland program, see our Iceland Program page.

Central America Partners

Nicaragua

Grupo Fenix is a Nicaragua-based cooperative network of university-trained engineers and local community people who share a common passion for developing solar- and renewable-energy technologies and finding cost-effective ways to have these simple technologies utilized. Providing affordable and renewable electricity to rural villages helps to reduce the over-consumption of firewood, which causes deforestation, the drying up of local rivers, serious erosion and loss of top soil, and devastating mudslides (see www.grupofenix.org). For more information, see our Central American Program page.

Honduras

Heifer International’s mission involves working with communities to end hunger and poverty and to care for the earth.  Its vision is a world of communities living together in peace and equitably sharing the resources of a healthy planet.  The simple idea of giving families a source of food through the gift of animals rather than short term relief caught on and has continued for over 60 years.  Today millions of families in 128 countries have been given the gifts of self-reliance and hope.  As people share their animals’ offspring with others, they “pass on the gift” along with their knowledge, resources, and skills and an expanding network of hope, dignity, and self-reliance is created that reaches around the globe.  Heifer’s development keeps the long term care of the earth as integral to its work. (see www.heifer.org)

Sustainable Harvest International’s (SHI) mission involves building a global network of local partners working toward environmental, economic, and social sustainability.  SHI facilitates long-term collaboration among trained local staff, farmers, and communities to implement sustainable land-use practices that alleviate poverty by restoring ecological stability. (see www.sustainableharvest.org)

Costa Rica

Asociacion ANAI is a Costa Rica-based community/environmental organization which has pioneered some of the tropical world’s most successful community-based, sustainable-development practices. Working hand in hand with the inhabitants of Costa Rica’s Talamanca region, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, ANAI has been instrumental in implementing a regional initiative that is helping rural communities become more economically self-reliant through environmentally friendly activities (see www.anaicr.org). For more information, see our Central American Program page.

Nicaraguan family

Kekoldi Scientific Center is located in the Kekoldi Reserve in Talamanca, Costa Rica.  It is a great place to study nature.  The special relationship that the Bri Bri people have with their environment has inspired the development of many different types of field studies opportunities. The immense biodiversity of the area in addition to the added richness of the migratory wildlife makes the Kekoldi Reserve and Tallamanca in general so incredibly valuable to conservation ecology and scientific research.  Volunteers may be a part of various opportunities to assist in research/conservation projects such as working with local official counters in monitoring raptor migration. (see www.kekoldi.org)

Program Partners

Earth Policy Institute is a non-government research organization whose main goal is "to raise public awareness to the point where it will support an effective public response to the threats posed by continuing population growth, rising CO2 emissions, the loss of plant and animal species, and the many other trends that are adversely affecting the Earth. The dissemination of information from the Institute is designed to help set the public agenda. Without a vision, without a sense of where we want to go, it will be very difficult to get there. The purpose of the Earth Policy Institute is to provide a vision of what an environmentally sustainable economy will look like, a roadmap of how to get from here to there, and an ongoing assessment of this effort, of where progress is being made and where it is not" (see www.earthpolicy.org).

CELL is also a member of The International Partnership for Service-Learning and Leadership, an educational organization "serving students, colleges, universities, service agencies and related organizations around the world by fostering programs that link volunteer service to the community and academic study" (see www.ipsl.org).

For information on educational study abroad loans as well as other information, see www.Edvisors.com.

For information on our college and university partners, please contact us at the address below.