Oaxaca Midway Update
July 9, 2008
The Oaxaca Project has just celebrated our mid-summer point and the beginning of week number four. By all accounts the last three weeks have flown by amidst a flurry of activity. Volunteers have been busy settling into a routine within their host families and communities. They have been busy working on their respective projects: Community Nutrition and Digital Culture. While the Community Nutrition volunteers have filled their days by conducting nutrition classes and creating amaranth gardens with the community women’s groups, school children and youth counterparts; the Digital Culture volunteers have been working within the local primary and secondary schools giving computer classes and starting digital technology clubs.
The Oaxaca Project Field Staff is very proud to report that all Volunteers have made great efforts to get to know their rural Oaxacan communities and make friends with community members of all ages. Volunteers are enjoying living all parts of the AMIGOS mission and are especially embodying the cross-cultural exchange goal in their beautiful communities where they are discovering all aspects of the incredibly rich Oaxacan culture. Among the highlights of these efforts are volunteers who play basketball and soccer daily with local youth, volunteers who play instruments with host family members and are learning to dance traditional dances, and others who have mastered the art of pressing a perfectly round corn tortilla and cooking it on the comal (tortilla grill) in their host family kitchens.
The strong connections that volunteers are making with community members were especially evident at our Regional Midterms that took place over this past weekend. The 4 Regional Midterms took place on different days and in different parts of Oaxaca and marked our half-way point in the program. These day-long events included the participation of youth counterparts from each community and it was wonderful to see how well our volunteers and local youth counterparts worked together and enjoyed doing so. Volunteers also had a chance to reconnect with friends they made at Briefing and enjoy some down time together. The main goal of the Midterm was to allow volunteers and their youth counterparts to share best practices from the 1st half of the summer and to strategize together in making the most of the 4 weeks that remain in the project.
At the Regional Midterms materials for Community Based Initiatives (CBIs) were also distributed and we look forward to seeing the results of CBI plans. The CBI projects include, among other things, the building of a community meeting space, the refurbishment of a Casa de la Cultura (Cultural Center), reforestation projects, trash pick-up systems, a community wide photography contest, local culture blogs and websites, documentary videos on traditional dances and festivals, and the much loved AMIGOS educational mural.
The Regional Midterms served as a way to regroup and recharge the volunteers and they returned to their communities with many new ideas and a heightened sense of excitement and enthusiasm for their final 4 weeks in community. Our Field Staff is very proud of the incredible work that the volunteers are doing in their communities and the positive spirit in which they engage with community members and each other. We are confident that the volunteers will take full advantage of the second half of the summer in community and that their efforts will yield even more wonderful project initiatives and lasting friendships.
