Secondary Projects

Community English Class: 

Tuesday nights I teach a beginner English class for adults in my community. The “Costeno promise” generally involves repeating the greatness of the idea and your certain attendance, followed by, low-and-behold, not coming. However, I am excited to say that the class has been extremely popular, with usually 18-25 adults attending. Everyone has big personalities, is super enthusiastic and avid homework-doers (a nice change). Classes are fun; we play lots of games, watch videos, act, listen to music. Cultural exchanges have included introducing me to Colombian rap artists and how to dance “mapale” in return expanding their pop music knowledge from Rihanna and Justin Bieber and how to dance the electric slide.  

English Teacher Classes:

Every other Saturday two other Peace Corps volunteers, Monica and Victor, and I hold a meeting for English teachers of Cartagena at my school. The aim is not to improve English language competency but rather to focus on methodologies and how to teach English more effectively. Topics have included: planning curriculum, making and saving lesson plans, teaching to students with different learning styles, and presenting successful games and activities that can be used in large classrooms with limited resources. Getting teachers to come on a Saturday has meant lots of “Costeno promises,” as mentioned above, but the few attendees (we’ve had from 2-6 teachers show up) are very positive about the class and furthermore working with teachers who are eager to learn and change is reassuring and rewarding.

Girls’ Leadership Group:

I saved the best for last!

I wanted to do projects outside of teaching English and furthermore was frustrated with not being able to find anything (indicatively there is no translation of “to volunteer” in Spanish). So, I created my own project… instead of participating in community service projects and volunteering by myself, why don’t I create my own I can control and get students to do it with me?

 It has been hard at times to live in such a machista culture where many woman stay with and seem to get validation from being with a man, no matter if he is a cheater or abusive. Moreover, there are pregnant girls as young as 6^th and 7^th grade at my school and after coming back from a week of intensive Peace Corps HIV/AIDS training, the lack of awareness of sexual health seemed all the more evident.

So, with the help of the school’s principal, the morning and afternoon social workers, the psychologist, and Nicole (the previous Peace Corps volunteer at my site who is a close friend and decided to stay in Cartagena after finishing her service) our girls’ leadership group has taken off and going strong for 5 weeks now!

We have 20 girls, all 10^th graders, and meet every Thursday night. We are finishing up our first unit on a healthy body image/healthy lifestyles. We’ve had some interesting discussions and last week the group made pamphlets on obesity, anorexia, and bulimia that are now in the resource center. I take dance classes twice a week and my teacher is coming to give a dance class to the girls for our final part of the unit. The plan for the next topic is sexual health and pregnancy prevention. I have been writing a grant with the Peace Corps to get funding so that larger-scale projects, trips, and guest speakers outside of the school can be possible.

The overall goal for the group is to support the girls to become leaders of their own bodies and in the community.

Our three objectives are as follows:

1.     1.  To raise girls’ self-esteem through gaining self-awareness: emotionally, physically and sexually. More specifically this means identifying their own strengths and weaknesses, dealing with stressful situations, thinking through decisions, and making goals for their future, among others. We gave the girls a list of possible topics and what we discuss Thursdays is largely based on those which they selected. 

2.    2.   To start the considering options after graduating, specifically entrance to university. This means bringing in professionals from various careers to talk to the girls about their job, visiting universities to see how students live, and working on applications, resumes and interview skills.

3.      3.  To think of other people and issues in the communities of Cartagena and to participate in community service projects that the girls themselves design. The girls have started to discuss needs and problems in their communities (such as lack of space for youth to hang-out and play, gangs, familial violence, disabled people, and trash). The ultimate goal is to have the girls identify an issue they are interested in and then, with our help, to go into neighborhoods of Cartagena and create and implement projects to combat the problem.