Forty years ago Castelli International School was tiny; a classroom with seven students, a small dark room for a library and a kitchen for a science room. A clay stove kept the classroom warm as long as students got the wood to keep it going. After the first week of the school’s existence a mother drives up insisting that her son, Milo Sini, should come to the school. She just came from a very elegant well known British school and found Milo sitting alone in the hallway. We soon found out why. He was a rather rebellious little creature with a lot of unacceptable expressions. During math class, we discovered that the 64 that was written on the board became a 46 on paper, and so on with other numbers and reading was really a challenge. Luckily the first specialist on Dyslexia came from England to speak about the problem. We went and realised that we had a lot to learn and we did. The young student’s behaviour changed from frustrated anger to exceptional behaviour. In fact, as the small faculty was busy teaching, when parents came to see this curious school, he would proudly show them around and the school slowly but surely grew!

He is now Community Health Officer at the Harvard Westlake School Studio helping students to confront and overcome their difficulties:

Castelli International has been an unforgettable experience for him and always close to his heart. But it is through Milo that we learned to discover the strengths of each child and provide the child with the tools to succeed.

“I’m in charge of the overall general health of the student body and anything that that would entail: anywhere from making sure that our kids are physically healthy and that they’re properly taken care of.”