Mucho Trabajo and Much more Impressions...

This Wednesday we had a meeting (a weekly meeting) with all educators of the different communities and because they are mostly women and more than 18, they were all talking in different groups and not listening to each other in the other meetings they had. I asked Margarita and Juan and explained them my concerns and observations and they felt very similar. I had the feeling that they both were not very sure on how to solve or handle this problem and so we sat down together and talked some possibilities through. Finally Wednesday morning in Ecuadorian manner an hour before the meeting Margarita and me planned a structured this meeting. I suggested to establish some kind of rules so that the people are not distracted by telephone calls, their kids running in and out, having conversations all the time etc. So we started this meeting a bit different and to my surprise most of them seemed to really like it and I had the feeling that already at that point some frustration of team members were released. After that we embarked on dynamic activities. I am quite glad that in my last weeks I learned from Streetwork how to use little dynamic games such as the Birthday game and the knot game etc. for team building and clarification purposes. They really liked it and had the chance to say a couple of things that go wrong at work related to the game. A bit hidden but still quite clear from everyone involved. Afterwards I lead a short evaluation of those games in my very broken Spanish. One can imagine it as one of those TV Quiz Shows where someone tries to describe something and the others have to guess what it is, very funny indeed as the English would say 
The meeting ended quite well and in an evaluation afterwards most people felt it was much better than before, they feel much more integrated and like a team. That made me quite glad also I know that there is still a lot of hard work to do, that this meeting was only a start.
Next week the holidays begin and in the Centre we have a holiday program. On two mornings a week I will finally teach the boys a bit of English and I already have some colorful ideas on how to do it. The problem is that some cannot read or write while some can.
Furthermore I am at the moment in the process of creating a leaflet on Mistreating Children/Abuse of Children for the Desarrollo Infantil Project. I talked to Margarita about it and explained to her that I would like to do some kind of training with the community educators before they take it out to the communities. I do not only want to create it and leave it I rather would like them to use it effectively and therefore we need to explore on how that is possible.
Besides I also got all educators to agree to collect a lot of different activities they do in their communities with the children to hand in during the next two weeks to make a big collection for everyone to share their skills and ideas. It is not only useful for varying the activities in the community, it is also an amazing team building task where everyone brings something valuable to it. It is simple but I hope it works out.
The whole last week I spent in the centre, which was very interesting for me, and through interviews with the social worker of the centre and some other people there I feel I got to know much more about it. Juan and Margarita would like me to make some kind of proposal for developing the work of the centre, especially the work they do with the families of the boys and girls at the centre. Therefore I try to gather a much info as possible but I already found some very exciting tasks Maria Eugenia, the social worker, and Lucy, the psychologist, and I want to work together on.

One thing I like to share with you are some impressions of this week:
The most recent one happened this morning. In one of the barrios (El Bosque) they have a fiesta today for “El dia de la familia” and Margarita and me only went very briefly to drop something off. We tried to find a different way out of the barrio and met a group of 5 little children I had already met before. They stood in front of a wooden hut which was partly covered in plastic bags and somehow like a little hut, kids build to play in. But this hut was honestly their home. It was tiny but it was the home of the whole family. Here in the Andes it is not hot, it is rather European Climate, with maximum 25 degrees during the day when it is very sunny and during the night it gets quite cold. And at the moment we have summer. How must it be during winter?


A boy in the centre for young offenders is 13 years old, comes from quite far out in the countryside and he is the only one of his brothers and sisters who is not allowed to go to school. Because he is the youngest he has to stay with his mum at home and get up early in the morning to work on the field, all day long. He speaks Quitschua as well as Spanish. On his head he has a very long scar from his childhood when he got hit in the family. In his community, they punish people by beating them up naked and putting them in ice cold water when they break the law. I desperately hope that he will get the chance to go to school because he is very bright and clever and seems very interested in learning new things.

A colleage told me this week that she has not seen her husband for 5 years, because he went to work in Germany to gain money for the family. She is very very sad and her daughter who is 12 does not talk very much, has no friends and spends most time in her room studying. Poverty is such a big problem that a lot of people go to Europe or the States to work and to send money back. She hopes that he comes back this year. They write emails now and than and phone each other once a month solely briefly because it is so expensive. He works in a northern German city as musician on the street.