Norval Soleyn is the 2025 Living Legacy Honoree. We celebrate his years of service to Christodora. Learn more about Norval in the interview below.

Recognizing the classic thin, sun-like radiating shape of an Aster or the pyramidal yellow-tipped stalk of a Goldenrod can make it easy to identify and point out to a friend, saying, "That’s an Aster!” or “Look at the Goldenrod by the highway!” 

But what if that was the tip of the iceberg?

After days on the trail, climbing mountains, and canoeing down rivers, you would think that the kids at the Manice Education Center wouldn’t have any energy on the last day of camp. Yet, on Friday, August 22nd, the forests rang with the sound of laughter and shrieks as Session Four students competed against each other with all the strength they had left in the “Wacky Os.” The Wacky O's, short for Wacky Olympics, is a Manice tradition where teams compete against each other on the last day of every summer session. This year, the staff had prepared something a little different for the final session of the summer…

This year’s Grounds and Garden Day celebrated wildflowers as we planted up our new wildflower garden!

On a grey Sunday, May 4, 2025, a group of 29 riders assembled in lower Manhattan as part of the TD 5 Boro Bike Tour. Everyone was pumped to bike for a cause — through city streets, across bridges and overpasses — all to raise resources for Christodora’s nature, learning, and leadership programs.

Spring 2025 featured two public volunteer days where Christodora friends and students helped to support our local parks.

Picture the end of October at the Manice Education Center: The OE staff wave goodbye as the last bus of field trip students departs for NYC, reeling from all they took in from the MEC landscape–The last of our summer veggies have been harvested for George; the golden rod, now bronzed, sweep the edges between the cut grass and wild forest edges; the chickens huddle closer together each night as the temperatures begins to dip…and then: the canvas tents come down, the yellow raincoats on the porch get counted, sorted and stored away, and the windows of the farmhouse get boarded up… inside, a once loud and lively dining hall is dark and quiet. 

Before there was the Manice Education Center in the Berkshires, there was Camp Northover in New Jersey - where generations of Christodora youth experiences the great outdoors every summer. Local historian, Ross Rapoport has been researching the history and geography of the old camp and has this dispatch to share.

In November 2024 our CORE students traveled to the Mianus River Gorge to learn about their old-growth hemlock trees and support the park through stewardship.

Check out all the fun and fabulous photos from The Campfire 2024!

A joyful celebration of community in support of Christodora!

Many hands make light work!

Manice welcomes Malus domestica to the campus.

Another year, another campfire - a night of warmth and community!

A new book chronicling the many lives of Christodora House by Joyce Milambiling is now available!