Fundación La Ventana de los Cielos

La Ventana de los Cielos: Learning to live with meaning and purpose

The Foundation La Ventana de los Cielos is truly a window to learning to live for all involved since it started its program work in 2006. Initiated by the Ricardo Montaner family, it is led by his wife, Marlene Rodriguez Miranda. It’s focus is on providing development opportunities to children, youth, to all those living with mental conditions and syndromes. La Ventana uses rather the term of persons with “special abilities”, as they focus on the abilities persons have, rather than defining them as having “intellectual disabilities”. 

Hundreds with various diagnosed – or undiagnosed – conditions, such as autism, Down syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, Microcephalia, Chromosome 49, Prader Willi Syndrome (to mention just some examples) have had the opportunity to develop life skills abilities, as well as show their “special ability” to transmit love, honesty, patience, joy, to others, at La Ventana de los Cielos in the past fourteen years.

At the moment they “meet and greet sessions” at La Ventana Zoom sessions, with the animals used for therapies parading on screen for them, until they can return to the Foundation farm.

Parents to children with special abilities are also included in the program. Virtual support through calls and counseling takes place regularly through the La Ventana network of volunteers, until all can return in person.

It is precisely volunteers who are the third important group La Ventana provides life skills to. Thousands have been trained and interacted with program participants and their families since 2006. Four  Universities send students to La Ventana for field service training. High School students as well (La Ventana receives volunteers from the age of twelve) and many families. Also for volunteers, the training has “gone virtual”: about three hundred have already enrolled in the eight lecture training series developed by La Ventana. In fact, any reader of the “Learning to Live Magazine” is welcome to join the course called “Disability and Human Rights” for free. The Course webpage is https://hdpi.org/professional-development/

You can be part of this program, and why not, consider becoming a donor to the work of the Foundation: https://www.laventanadeloscielos.org/donar

Even a twenty US dollar monthly contributions is important and meaningful. All of these activities are a true contribution to “Learning to Live”: they contribute to fill our lives with meaning and purpose. A true window to a heaven of well being!