The newest Liberated Learners center, Abot Tala, opened in Manila, The Philippines, on April 1. It was only a dream last summer when Ken Danford flew out to Manila to meet up with Joie Villarama and the fledgling team—9 months later, reality. In Tagalog, Abot Tala means “To the Stars”, and clearly they don’t just mean this for the kids. Congratulations to all—it’s no small feat to get a new Liberated Learners center off the ground!
Joei wrote about their first week in her blog post, Lift Off!:
On the second floor of Commune Cafe at Poblacion … Abot Tala rocketed into space. … Maybe one week is too short to say but we are already loving it so much, we wish we could expand the age group to cover grade school, not only high school. Our hearts are brimming when teens, tweens and parents describe their experience at the center.
One of the big challenges with opening a Liberated Learners center is marketing and promotion before you have a center with members and staff to actually feature. That’s where other Liberated Learners centers can come in handy. If you’ve been to North Star, you’ll perhaps recognize the background footage in this promotional video that Abot Tala featured on their Facebook page 3 months ago. It has 33 shares and 1.7K views—now that’s getting the word out:
Abot Tala is reaching for the stars. As they say on their website:
It’s what school would look like if we could redesign and redefine it.
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