This section discusses the different programs in the El Recreo community project. The focus is on programs that are new, changing, or that we are directly involved in.
This month I was in Canada for 3 weeks, so I will talk a bit about that later.
The medical insurance program is a program whereby the volunteers in the barrio can pay an "insurance" and have their money multiplied by 4. This money can then be used for any medical purpose for them or their families. i.e. visits to the doctor and/or medications.
This month, before I left for Canada, we had a meeting with about 35 people in this program to talk about the problems and misconceptions that people had. The meeting went very well, and between explanations from myself, Don Wilfredo, and Ana Maria, I think the people finally had a good grasp of how the program works. Before, a lot of people thought that the number of visits was unlimited, but the program would quickly be defunct if that were true. So we explained that the number of visits was limited by the amount of "insurance" paid by the members. Hopefully the program will be more used now.
The big news this month is that now I am working in the library instead of teaching. It was decided that education could continue on its own and that I could do some good in the library program.
The popular library project is, well, a library. But the library is more than that for the community. First of all, as a library, it's very useful since neither of the two local schools have a library and people didn't have anywhere to go to do research for their school assignments.
The library is also a central location for many cultural and social events. It has a good stock of educational games, including chess. I hope to set up a regular time slot for people to come and play chess. I used to regularly play chess with some young people but this has fallen out of my busy schedule. The library is also frequented by students practising their guitar skills.
I am helping develop some systems to organise the books, stories, texts and magazines for easier access and usage. I am also looking for some titles that we feel are needed.
I've just started this week, so really I can't say too much about it or about what I'm going to do, but that should give you (and me) an idea, until next month when I can fill in more details.
Ana Maria is not only the owner of the email account that we use, she is an important member of the community. Ana Maria is the one of the nuns that we work with in the community. She is the one who has the vision for the projects and is the driving force behind the community's development.
Ana Maria used to teach in the University of Central America, here in town, but recently resigned to spend more time working on the projects in the barrio. She is a small woman, full of energy, who would put most people to shame with her work ethic. She has a hand in all of the projects, from running the parents' meetings in the education program, to calling local organisations looking for rice for the nutrition program, to meeting with the volunteers regularly, keeping her finger on the pulse of the community.
Ana Maria also coordinates the Bible Centre and a women's group. With the women's group, she is empowering the women to take charge of their lives, to build their self-confidence and to bring them together to support each other.
Ana Maria is a tough but loving leader in the community. She is very computer literate now, little by little grasping email and Word, so that I think she now knows it better than I. I have learned a lot working with Ana and have a lot of respect for her.
Most of this past month I was in Canada, visiting family and friends and doing various errands that had to be done on Canadian soil. I rested a lot and went out a little. Gretchen worked a lot, having a job and her thesis and several other things on the go, but we spent most of her spare time together. It was nice to visit several friends, although unfortunately I didn't get to see everyone.
We also spent a few days in Toronto, with almost every second scheduled into meetings and a fundraiser. Both went well, as mentioned below. But the meetings were the most important and I think they helped set us in a good direction for the future of FOG. See summary below.
After the meetings, I got to visit my family for a day or so, then flew back to Vancouver and gave another slide show. It seemed like just a few hours later that I was on my way to Managua again with five big bags of donated stuff for the barrio, with a walker from Normand in Ottawa. His donation alone accounted for three of the five bags. (Someone remind me of that, the next time he asks me to take stuff for him :-) So I struggled through the Seattle and Managua airports with 200 or so pounds of luggage. Of course, it was all okay in the end, and here I am again, to finish off the the last three months of my Nicaraguan residency.
On Saturday, February 22nd, there was a FOG fundraising dinner in Toronto and slide show in Vancouver on the 27th. They went very well, raising about $1300 in total, with another $1200 in pledges for later this year. Thanks to all that came out and/or participated.
Meeting - Feb 22/23, 1997
The "core members" of the Fair Opportunities Group (FOG) met on February 22 and 23. (Core members is our informal term for Board of Directors) We discussed several things, including rewording our mission statement, the administrative structure of FOG, the purpose of FOG, and our respective "to do" lists.
The new mission statement (probably to be reworded again later, suggestions welcome) is:
To foster partnerships with communities in the developing world in order to further the communities' goals including social/economic/cultural/physical growth and to increase mutual understanding.
The administrative structure of FOG, is to be as open as possible, where each member is in contact with one core member and communicates to the group through them. Of course, the main means of communication will be e-mail, thus members will be free to e-mail any other member. Just in terms of structure, communication is through the core members. Thus any administrative communication will be routed through the core members, but most regular communication will be to all members, as the members choose. The basic premise is that FOG is a network of friends and friends of friends, so that a basic trust exists between us that members will not be left out of the loop.
The core members are basically functioning as a board of directors, with administrative tasks divided between them. There is to be no hierarchy with all decisions to be by consensus. As for the core members, we are targeting having Developing World core members and women core members within a few years.
Next, we discussed the purpose of FOG. As with most of these points, they have been discussed and set out before, but we needed to discuss them as a group and set everything out on paper. Our purpose is twofold, with one being to finance community development projects and the other to provide a volunteer network for young professionals to act as an informal global resource centre for community development.
Finally, we set out tasks including recruitment, project indentification, fundraising, etc. between the group. So, that is what happened in a nutshell. If you have questions, you can email me, or check out the web page, which should have all this in more detail soon (if not already).