What We’ve Accomplished + 2023 Plans

To hear the story behind Illuminated Life School, our mission and our three phase plan, watch this 7-minute video.

What We’ve Done So Far

When we first launched our plan was to open a 100-child physical school in Humacao, Puerto Rico (private school with sliding scale tuition – affordable to all students).  We secured an abandoned school building in downtown Humacao through a deal with the mayor’s office where we would lease the building for $1/year for 20 years.  The building needed significant renovations so we hired a grant writing company and applied for several building grants (over $1M worth).  

We hired several consultants to help get our first school open, including part-time administrative, school design and legal consultants. In addition, we hired a diverse School Design Collaborative / Think Tank to create our school Guidebook, Graduate Profile and programming (7 paid people plus Heidi as a volunteer).  

Unfortunately, after nearly two years of work, we realized launching a physical school would not be a reality in the short term.

Between complications with COVID protocols in the school system, corruption in the PR Department of Education, and the Humacao mayor getting arrested by the FBI which resulted in us losing our school building contract… we had to switch gears.

After a thorough assessment, we created a new three phase plan which we’ll begin rolling out in 2023.

Our Plans Starting in 2023

Phase 1:  In partnership with the Boys & Girls Club we’re launching a free after-school program for under-resourced kids that is focused on physical, mental & emotional health, and deep financial literacy.  This will allow us to test out some of the programming we’ve created and immediately start helping kids.

If we hit our fundraising goal this year, we will also launch a K-5 bilingual Pod School with sliding scale tuition.  Your donations will go towards giving under-resourced kids scholarships.  This will allow us to deliver a truly customized whole-child education to students in a small nimble setting where we don’t need to work with the government.

We’re also creating an open-source version of our Guidebook that schools and families across the planet can use and adapt for their kids.  The goal is to revolutionize education worldwide by introducing an entirely new model of education – one that’s designed to adapt with our ever changing world and to give ALL kids the support, life skills and education they need to unleash & illuminate their natural genius and live their best lives.   

Phase 2:  We’ll launch more Pod Schools, as well as an online academy and guided homeschool program.  We’ll also launch a mastermind network of schools and families that are using part or all of our model so that we can all learn from each other and continue to develop the model as a worldwide collective.

Phase 3:  We’ll continue to grow our Pod School Program and online academy, and we’ll launch full physical schools (most likely free charter schools and independently funded private schools that are affordable to all families with sliding scale tuition).  

How You Can Help

I believe the fastest way to raise the tide is to revolutionize K-12 education.  We can change our entire world for the better in REALLY big ways, in one generation.  

Imagine a world where every child has all of the life skills they need, and their full potential is illuminated and unleashed. 

Shaking up the status quo is no small task — but together we can do amazing things. 

Together we can start changing the school system across the planet, starting in Puerto Rico – a beautiful little island that desperately needs a revolution in education.  

Puerto Rico has one of the worst school systems in the world – worse than MANY developing nations.  And change here is extremely difficult.  I could spend hours sharing stories about the bureaucracy, corrupt department of ed, and systematic problems.  

Instead I’m going to share with you how we’re helping solve it.

We’re not taking money from the government because we’re unwilling to play by their rules.  We’re launching self-funded small pod schools that are designed to unleash the genius in every child and equip them to go out and live their best life as happy contributing members of society.  

Right now, we need your donations.  We’re a 501c3 nonprofit and a qualifying Act 60 charity. We’re working on getting a variety of long-term revenue streams to the school including corporate sponsorships.

But right now, we need your donations in order to launch our first pod school next year and to make it accessible to under-resourced Puerto Rican kids, in addition to your kids.  Your donation will provide scholarships to Puerto Rican students who are currently lost in an exceptionally dysfunctional public school.  You can completely change the trajectory of a child’s life.

Make your donation now, HERE (takes just 3 minutes).

THANK YOU for coming along the journey with me. 

Love,

Heidi DeCoux Founder &
President of the Board