Without a shadow of a doubt, the story of the Waldorf International Kindergarten shares the path of the life of kindergarten school teacher Eva Herre, in Barão de S. João, near Lagos (Algarve).
This is how it all started:
Motivation... Impulse...
Before coming to Algarve, Eva worked for four years in Porto, as the director of the German School’s Kindergarten.
At that stage of her life, she was searching for her true path, for another way of look- ing at children, at the human beings, at the world. She needed to accomplish herself personally as well as professionally in a way that made sense to her, and she believed she could do that in Portugal!
She had a strong will to gather forces and create a place for the little ones, where they could truly be children, with the conditions for a healthy development, in harmony with Nature.
She understood that she could find that path in Waldorf education and in Anthroposophy...
In 1991 she visited the village of Barão de S. João, and an organic farm in Vinha Velha, where a Waldorf primary school was just being inaugurated (the “Escola Primavera do Algarve”). There she met a group of enthusiastic parents, most of them German, who also wished they could have a kindergarten for their younger children.
Those parents, just like Eva, where looking for an education which would awaken the creativity, the respect and the autonomy in each child. They also believed that free playing was very important at this age.
They had the vision of a kindergarten as a social project, where parents and teachers together would share ideas, initiatives, tasks, responsibility, for better communication, effort and organization so that in the end, a healthier place for the children would be created. And that vision started to take form…