Coclé, Panama
Mid-Term Report
Our Festival de la Juventud on Saturday, July 7th
was a huge success! Volunteers arrived to our headquarter city, Penonomé, with
six Panamanian youth from each of their communities to share a day of team
building activities, artistic presentations, and a workshop to improve project
proposals for their community-based initiatives! After a traditional Panamanian
breakfast (which the Volunteers are quite accustomed to by now!), our 150
attendees broke into smaller groups to more effectively interact with their
community members to strengthen their relationships and their team dynamic.
Panama Verde, the youth environmental protection group that
AMIGOS is partnering with, led a series of outdoor energizers and team-building
activities that allowed Volunteers to work together to play tug-of-war,
transport a group of people across invisible rivers with limited resources, and
work their way out of human knots. All Volunteers and community members also
participated in a community-based initiative workshop to present their project
ideas to the whole group and to receive feedback from local experts.
After a group lunch, we all gathered in the brightly
decorated auditorium for 16 beautiful presentations that the Volunteers had put
together with their community members during the first two weeks in their
communities. Traditional Panamanian dances with live Cumbia bands were the most
popular, and a few skits, a fashion show, some singing, and two Reggaeton
numbers rounded out a very diverse performance. We closed with day with
certificates and Festival t-shirts for all participants.
Our one-day midterm on July 18th will allow Volunteers
to explore Penonomé for the day, with plenty of time for phone calls, internet
use, ice cream, speaking English, and a review of progress so far in the
communities! We are really looking forward to spending the rest of the summer
with the Volunteers; they are off to such a fabulous start and we can’t wait to
see how their projects and community experiences evolve and develop in their
final weeks!
