I know, I know… it has been too long. I haven’t intended to
keep family and friends out of the loop (not to mention readers I don’t know… indeed,
the blogspot application allowing me to view where my audience lives can seem a
bit strange—helloooo out there, you Dutch, Ukranian, and French readers). I don’t
blame laziness for my negligence; really, more than anything, I’d deem the
culprit my current infatuation with life. I’m LOVING it and am busy trying to
live this life to the fullest. I love my job. I love the people. I am never bored. I have worked hard
to get here and am proud of myself. I know that the best is still to come in my
Peace Corps service.
To briefly wrap up the past 2 months of our new and improved
girls’ empowerment and leadership program, I should start by saying that the
grant through the US Agency for International Development and Peace Corps that
I wrote (for daaaays) and received has made this year that much easier and interactive.
Instead of using my Peace Corps salary (which was already hard enough to support
just myself on) to buy food, photocopies, and materials last year for the
program, we now have grant money for that, plus more to buy extra supplies,
pay for transportation to bring in community members and take the girls out of
our neighborhood, and pay for materials for projects, among other things.
We have 24 girls in the program, aged 14-17. I am still the
one designing our activities, establishing contacts, creating community service
projects; however, Mariela and Dayra (the two social workers at my school)
continue to help enormously and come every week to help out with the activities
planned.
Our latest “topic” has been learning about the lifestyles of
other women in the world, aka life outside of our Colombian neighborhood. One
particularly exciting project we completed was to paint a monstrous 12 foot map
of the world in our school. Many students do not know which counties boarder
Colombia, let alone countries outside of Latin America. Furthermore, when in my
pursuit of a world map, I had to go to about six different stores in two cities
until I found one that cost US $40—hmm, there’s a reason no one seems to know
geography... world maps just don’t exist.
My sincerest apologies to those countries that were left
out, especially Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe… it’s not perfect. BUT at
least when students see this map, regardless of a few mistakes, it may make
them think about how much world there is outside of Colombia, let alone our
neighborhood.
