Michoacán, Mexico Briefing Report
AMIGOS summer in Michoacán is off to a great start! The Volunteers arrived in Guadalajara Wednesday (June 27) in the evening and traveled directly to the headquarter city, La Piedad. AMIGOS is working with several amazing host organizations this summer, including a university, UNIVA, that invited AMIGOS Project Staff to hold briefing on their campus. In addition to sharing their beautiful campus with AMIGOS, they welcomed the Volunteers with a delicious Mexican lunch. The party included a large mariachi band, singing, dancing and interviews with reporters. The next day a photo of one of our supervisors appeared in full color in the local newspaper!
During the two-day briefing Volunteers had a chance to practice lesson planning, meet host organization contacts and hear all about their communities. Volunteers and Project Staff officially ended briefing with a piñata on Friday night, but on Saturday the Volunteers in eight of our communities continued on to special training activities. The directors of Puente a la Salud took a 15 hour bus ride from Oaxaca to lead a cooking workshop for the four communities working on the amaranth pilot project.
The volunteers´ day of cooking with community members and local health workers ended with a fantastic meal and lots of interest in growing amaranth. At the same time, SAPAS (yet another one of AMIGOS' host organizations!) provided a special training session about water conservation and purification. They focused on interactive ways to share information with groups ranging from 5-year-olds to adults.
Every partnership arrived in community with a giant bag of art materials to help them jump right into their youth-to-youth classes. Many communities have already been planning their community based initiatives and Project Staff and Volunteers are looking forward to seeing the project proposals soon!
Between now and midterm Project Staff and Volunteers be hosting the AMIGOS Chapter Leaders , approving community projects and sending out the necessary materials. Midterm will provide a quick break for volunteers before our Second Annual Ecological Fair which we hope will build on the success of last year´s fair.
