Emergence
Emergence 2027 16 places · $499/mo · registration opens soon
join the waitlist

Ojochal, Costa Rica

Emergence

A year of real work, alongside your school.

Two days a week for a year, students aged 15–17 take on real work with a crew. They learn to make things, to lead, and to finish what they start.

WhoAges 15–17
Contact2 days a week
Cohort16 places · registration opens soon

What is Emergence?

The other half of an education.

Emergence is the experiential programme at the centre of Life Project High School.

Students work in crews on real projects. Real work somebody is waiting for, not projects invented for a grade: a greenhouse that has to grow food, a café that has to open, a festival that has to happen on the day it says it will. Mentors are matched to the work rather than the subject.

Over a year you will have led something, kept a budget, run a build, held the story, and been led by someone your own age.

It is run by The Gift Academy with Life Project Education: two organisations, one learning experience. Life Project holds the school and the academic record. The Gift Academy holds the formation and the real work.

1 year

Feb – Dec 2027

Ages 15–17

16 places only

2 days

a week, plus one Saturday

Credit

toward a diploma

Why it works

01

Real life rewards very different abilities.

Nobody outside a classroom is paid to recall things on command. They are paid to judge, decide, lead, repair, persuade and hold their nerve.

02

So we don't simulate real life. The curriculum is made of it.

Real land, real projects, real budgets, real audiences, real consequences. If the build falls down, it falls down. That is the assessment.

03

Those abilities keep paying, long after the programme ends.

They are the same capacities employers say they cannot find, and the same ones that make someone useful in a crisis, a team or a community.

Why two days

Two days is the smallest dose that works.

Two is the smallest number of days in which a young person can carry real work and actually finish it. It is also small enough to leave their school, their subjects and their friends exactly where they are.

One day a week

Too little. A crew loses the thread between sessions, and nothing gets past the planning stage.

Five days a week

Too much. It replaces their education rather than adding the half of it that has been missing.

A fifteen-year-old is entirely capable of being useful. Most are never asked.

Who it's for

Emergence is for 15 to 17 year olds who want to be trusted with real work, and want the people around them to notice whether they finish it.

You do not need to be top of your class. You need to be curious, willing to get your hands dirty, and prepared to finish things. Sixteen people get in.

This is for the teenager who

  • is bored rather than struggling
  • asks better questions than the lesson allows
  • builds things nobody assigned
  • goes quiet in a classroom and comes alive on a worksite
  • has more capability than their report card can hold

It may not be for you if

  • You want someone else to tell you exactly what to do.
  • You want school to be entirely predictable.
  • You aren't ready to participate in a community.
  • You don't want to reflect on your own behaviour.

What they walk away able to do

The things nobody grades.

How to run a meeting so it ends with decisions. How to ask a stranger for help and actually get it. How to keep a crew working when two of them have fallen out and the date has not moved. How to finish.

And the other half, which is about age. A fifteen-year-old is capable of real work, and most are never asked to do any. Responsibility cannot be simulated. Either the greenhouse produces food or it does not. Either the event happens on the day printed on the invitation or people turn up to nothing.

Sound like your teenager?

Join the waitlist.

Registration is not open yet. Join the waitlist and you will be first to hear when it is.

join the waitlist

Your week · two days, two identities

Studio Day & Circle Day

The two contact days are not interchangeable. One is for making things. One is for thinking about them, and getting ready to put them in front of people.

Studio Day · Hands & Land

Land skills, tools, the build, the crew's own project. Guest experts work alongside the students.

Circle Day · Ideas & Rehearsal

A seminar on an idea, communication and boundaries practice, embodiment, crew rehearsal for the offering.

The Thread runs between them: one real piece of work a week, carried alone, set at the end of one contact day and picked up at the start of the next.

Festival Saturdays, one per month, ten per year

Saturdays are where the big work lives: extended build pushes on the structure, long-form fieldwork with land stewards, incubator sprints, and, at each quarter's end, the offering itself. Families and community come, because Saturdays are when they can.

A typical month

Studio
Circle
Thread
Studio
Circle
Thread
Studio
Circle
Fest Sat

The year · four acts, four offerings

Four times a year, you put it in front of people.

No exams. The year runs on performance: four public offerings, one per quarter, building to a full community festival you produce yourselves. The audience, families, neighbors, partners, is part of the design.

The audience widens with every act

I
The work is for us
II
The work is for the school
III
The work is for someone outside it
IV
The work is for everyone

What a crew takes on

Build

Design and create something tangible. A water system, a structure, a repaired trail.

Research

Investigate a question that matters, with real data and people who know the field.

Organize

Plan an event, a campaign or a community initiative, and see it through.

How a project runs

Something real, built and handed over

Each crew takes on a real project: they find the need, research it, work with the people who have it, build something, hit obstacles, change their approach, and end by handing it over and saying what they learned. Some projects run a term. Some grow across the year.

Each student holds a named role in their crew, and the roles rotate. Over a year you will have led something, kept a budget, run a build, held the story, and been led by someone your own age.

Question Research Prototype Test Revise Offer
I Weeks 1–10 · Feb–Apr
Act I · Community

The work is for us

The cohort arrives, learns to work together, and writes the agreements it will hold itself to. Land skills, tools, fire, and the basics of moving as a crew.

  • Blade and tool care, fire, cordage, shelter
  • Gift-mapping and crew formation
  • Community agreements, written and ratified

It ends in public · Festival Saturday 3

El Encuentro, The Gathering

An evening the students host for their families. The agreements are read aloud and witnessed, and each crew introduces the work it is taking on.

II Weeks 11–20 · Apr–Jun
Act II · Earth

The work is for the school

Each crew takes one system, water, food, energy or governance, and designs it for a place that needs it. The build begins.

  • Site analysis, soil and water studies
  • Systems mapping and design
  • First build milestone on the ground

It ends in public · Festival Saturday 6

Tierra Viva, The Raising

A build day open to the community. Visitors walk the systems maps with the crew that drew them, and the structure goes up in front of the people it is for.

III Weeks 21–30 · Aug–Oct
Act III · World

The work is for someone outside it

The lens widens. Media, story, and a hard look at the assumptions behind their own plans.

  • Filming, recording and story-building
  • Exchanges with students elsewhere
  • Where our assumptions came from

It ends in public · Festival Saturday 8

Historias, The Screening

A public screening of the work, followed by a world café where the audience argues the questions the films raise and the students hold the room.

IV Weeks 31–40 · Oct–Dec
Act IV · Emergence

The work is for everyone

The work is finished and handed over. Producing the festival becomes the last thing they learn.

  • Projects completed and delivered
  • Budgeting, programming, run-of-show
  • The portfolio assembled and told out loud

It ends in public · Festival Saturday 10

The Emergence Festival

One full day, four concurrent stages, produced end to end by the students, for families, neighbours and the wider community.

Mentorship

Who will know my kid?

It is the question parents actually ask, and it is the right one. Five people will know your teenager over the year, each from a different angle, and none of them is guessing.

At the centre

Your
teenager

01 · of five

Academic guidance

Subject teachers at Life Project who know where your teenager is in each course, week by week.

02 · of five

Developmental mentorship

One adult who holds the whole picture: how the year is landing, not just how the work is going.

03 · of five

Project mentorship

Matched to what the crew is building, from inside the bioregion. A builder, a filmmaker, an ecologist, a business owner.

04 · of five

Peer relationships

A crew who see each other every contact day for a year, and who carry a share of the same deadline.

05 · of five

Structured reflection

Weekly, and part of the assessment rather than an add-on. Nobody gets to the end of the year without having looked at it.

tap a circle

December · Festival Saturday 10

The Emergence Festival

One full day, four concurrent stages, produced end-to-end by students, held on and around the structure they built with their own hands. The stage you graduate on is the one you raised.

The Village Stage

Design Exhibition

Four deep system designs, water, food, energy, governance, assembled into one collective village, presented through student-led tours of the finished structure and site.

The Story Stage

Screenings & Performance

Digital stories, devised performance, and testimonio. The Act III media projects find their full audience; the year's narrative is told by those who lived it.

The Commons

Marketplace & Table

Student-run food, craft, and enterprise, the entrepreneurial curriculum in live operation. Legacy projects gifted to the community they were made for.

The Threshold

Closing Ceremony

Each student is witnessed for the year they have just done, the February letter is read back to them, and the community marks what they finished.

Academics

The academics hold.

Emergence is not an escape from academics. Core academic learning stays central. Wherever it can, it connects to a real question, a real project or a real experience.

Core academics

  • English Literature & Composition
  • Spanish Humanities
  • Mathematics
  • Environmental Science, Biology & Permaculture
  • Social-Emotional & Academic Advisory
  • Physical Education
  • Fine Arts

Two ways of seeing progress.

Academic progress

Grades, credits, academic standards and transcript requirements, held by Life Project Education.

Developmental progress

Portfolio evidence, mentor feedback, peer feedback, reflection and demonstrated competencies.

We don't believe a GPA tells the whole story. We also don't pretend academic standards don't matter.

Academic continuity

Credits and transcripts are issued through Life Project Education, which has partnered with a US-based high school so that a year here carries forward.

Applications to WASC and MSA-CESS are submitted and in process. We say in process because that is what it is; the current partnership is what guarantees continuity today. We will walk you through the full detail.

Where the year can lead

Back into a conventional school with credits intact, on toward university applications with a portfolio most applicants don't have, or forward into SERV at eighteen.

Enrolment

Two ways in

Emergence is one programme, and there are two ways to be in it. The days, the work, the offerings and the festival are identical. What differs is where your academics come from.

Life Project High School

Who it's for
You enrol at Life Project Education for grades 10–12
Your week
Emergence is two of your five school days
Academics
Life Project carries English, maths, science and language
Credit
Transcript and diploma through Life Project
Fee
$997 / month, five days

$997 / month

Emergence on its own

Who it's for
You stay where you are: another school, homeschool, or an online curriculum
Your week
Two days with us. The rest of your week is yours
Academics
You bring your own
Credit
Available through Life Project if you want it. Not required if you're already covered
Fee
$499 / month, two days

$499 / month

Same cohort, same year, same festival. Students from both routes are in the same crews from the first week. Nobody is a visitor.

A note on the two figures. Emergence on its own is not two fifths of a school day. It is the whole programme: the two contact days, all mentorship, all project materials, ten Festival Saturdays, the four public offerings and the festival. You bring your own academics, and you pay for everything else.

Tuition

What it costs, in plain numbers.

$499

per month, Feb to Dec 2027, Emergence on its own

Included: two contact days a week plus one Saturday a month, all mentorship, all project materials, lunch on contact days, and the four public offerings.

Enrolled at Life Project High School instead? Tuition is $997 a month for five days, with Emergence included. Both routes are set out in Two ways in.

Cost should not be the thing that decides this.

Some places each cohort are supported. If Emergence is right for your teen and the monthly figure is the only obstacle, say so in the application, we will look at what is possible before we say no.

Payment plans are available on request.

join the waitlist
16 places Registration opens soon Interview + baseline self-assessment

RISE is part of the year and every student takes part. It is billed separately from monthly tuition, at a reduced rate for Emergence families. We will send you both figures. See RISE →

The 2027 cohort

Join the waitlist.

Registration for February 2027 is not open yet. Sixteen places, and the list hears first: dates, both routes, the fee and the forms go to these families before they go anywhere else.

We couldn't save your request. Please try again, or email hello@thegift.is.
You are on the list. We have you down for February 2027, and you will hear about registration before anyone else does.

A handful of emails about the 2027 cohort, nothing else. Unsubscribe any time.

Questions

The ones people actually ask.

Most of what parents ask is here.

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Who runs it

Built and led by three people who have done this before.

Zamir Dhanji

Founder / Program Architect

A decade in sustainability education, youth mentorship and performing arts. Has guided global Rites of Passage programs through Canada, India and Peru. Trained by Dr. Gabor Maté; co-created Patterns to Presence, a program for healing attachment trauma. Founder of the TRU Yoga School.

Alys Robinson

Life Project Founder

Educator and founder of Life Project Education, the partner school, a holistic learning community in Costa Rica. Over 25 years of combined research and international teaching, weaving holistic pedagogy, experiential learning and regenerative living into a blueprint for future-ready schools.

Terra Fleenor

Program Manager

Instructional designer, community organizer and relationship coach with over 20 years of event experience, including Envision Festival. Co-creator of Holistic Life Tribe. She is the person who makes the year actually run.