Bring a Group
Work, play, learn, eat, rest
Rancho Mastatal has been welcoming groups into the Mastatal community since 2001. Our programs reflect the better world we are trying to build, brick by earthen brick, student by inquiring student. For over a decade we have been sharing authentic, passionate, and inspiring visits with students from around the world. Many past educational participants have said that the Ranch has changed their lives. We hope your students will become a part of our community as well!
Our program is unique. We fully integrate your students and leadership team into our community and home. This is where we live as well as where we work. A Ranch visit is an invitation to work on our projects, play in our games, share in our meals, and truly live beside us. The Core Team, Apprentices, and “Tico” Team all bring a passion that will empower your students to see the world differently. There is a heart and soul to Rancho Mastatal that is felt by all who come explore with us.
Our Living Learning Laboratory
Through supported active learning opportunities, we expose students to concrete solutions for the challenges currently facing our planet. We use experiential learning across settings, including the rainforest environment, the Mastatal community, and the outdoor living classroom that is the Ranch. We teach through workshops, lectures, shadowing, one-on-one skill development, and daily farm-sustaining practices. Students can expect to be challenged by new ideas and tangible skills that are carried back home to promote a more sustainable global culture.
Our curriculum revolves around natural building, permaculture, organic gardening, food preparation and cooking, greywater and blackwater solutions, agroforestry, medicinal plants, alternative cooking technologies, fermentation, health and wellness, and community development. Our partners in the community of Mastatal provide further opportunities for the study of tropical ecology, Spanish language, and Costa Rican life and culture.
Our experiential, skill-building based curriculum fills an important gap in today’s conventional academic programming. Outdoor oriented and hands-on programs allow students the opportunity to get dirty and learn skills that are pertinent to the well-being of our planet while inspiring them to make concrete, positive changes in their lives. Our curriculum is designed to establish solutions to the environmental challenges of our time and to show alternative paths toward a more place-based lifestyle.
We are able to design entire courses around a single topic, such as natural building, or provide a diversity of “plug and play” modules to best meet your group’s needs. Teaching themes are usually a mix of lectures and “walk and talks.” Most themes and hands- on activities last between two and three hours.
Our local swimming hole
Help Build Our Campus
Theory is put into practice through extensive hands-on participation in our projects and practices. We have grown our site slowly and organically, through the active participation of students such as yours. In addition to building hard skills, our curriculum inspires care, thoughtfulness, and a passion for the earth and for each other. We provide not only intense learning opportunities, but the chance to plug in, give back, and be part of something greater. We consider this the most powerful form of learning.
We hope to provide all our visitors with an innovative and inspiring sustainability-focused experience. We can custom design any trip and curriculum for your middle school, high school, college, university, for-profit, or non-profit group.
Send us an email regarding:
Sample Itineraries
Budgets and Quotes
Detailed Activities and Topics
Past Partner Organizations
Additional Services: Full Trip Planning, Bilingual Guides
Please see our FAQ page or reach out to us with any additional questions. We look forward to bringing your group into our Rancho Mastatal family.
