View from Terrazas, one of the "Casa del Niños" sites... Yes, we walked all the way up!
As part of the Peru program, each of us was assigned a volunteer position for the first half of term in El Agustino, a poor area of Lima. We're all working with Servicios Educativos El Agustino (SEA), which is an organization that offers innumerable services to community members of El Agustino, including workshops on computer training, providing micro-loans to first-time business starters, as well as management assistance to business owners, after school programming, and many other services.
Unfortunately, when we first arrived last Monday to begin our volunteer jobs, they were not as organized as our director hoped, so we did a fair amount of shuffling and restructuring who would be doing what, when. Last week, I helped the Carls who have been placed in the various after school programs, assisting elementary school students with their math, spelling, and religion homework. Don't worry, we got to play, too!
This Monday was my first day working at my "official" volunteer job: helping women with their "Comedores", better understood as "Open Dining Rooms", which function similarly to a hybrid soup kitchen/food pantry. The format is really different from anything I've heard about in the United States, and awesome. These women get funding and government assistance (albeit little) to prepare daily meals that families pick up and bring home--either to provide the evening meal, or to add to what they already have at their table. Each portion is equivalent to $0.60, and I don't think there is a limit to how many a family picks up.
Anyway, SUPER COOL, right!? I was under the impression that I would be helping the women prepare the daily meals, but on Monday, I found out that Arielle and I are charged with visiting each of the 29 Comedores to listen to the testimonies/histories of each, and to collect observations for SEA managers to more properly assist the Comedores' needs. EVEN COOLER!!
The first steps for this project have been to hold meetings with the Comedores of various zones (the 29 comedores make up 5 zones). Ari and I were in charge of preparing the structure to these meetings, which has not been an easy feat. We decided to focus on some pretty basic concepts: Defining the organization, its purpose, and functional strengths and weaknesses. I won't bore you with more details (this is already a long post!)
In short, today was the first of the "Zone Meetings". My meeting began with the Zone's Director introducing herself and asking me what the meeting was about. I was shocked that she hadn't been given ANY information about the purpose of this meeting, but once I explained what Ari and I prepared, she took over and the meeting went smoothly. Apparently, Ari was not as lucky. Her Zone's Director sat in the back and had her lead the whole meeting, gasp!
Today really taught me that while I understand a fair amount of Spanish, I really need to strengthen my speaking skills and vocabulary.. It was really difficult to answer the questions these women had and to accurately portray my ideas during small group discussions. We'll see what tomorrow brings!
No comments:
Post a Comment