Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Día de la Tierra

Earth Day (aka “Día de la Tierra”) is the 22nd of April. All of the Environmental PCVs were required to organize some activity for community awareness. I decided to show a viewing of part of the movie “Earth” (the new Disney movie that came out for last year’s Earth day) and prepared a small talk about the significance of Día de la Tierra for the students of the middle and high schools, but also wanted to have some sort of hands on activity. Taking the lead from the Peruvians, we decided to have a parade in honor of Día de la Tierra – a generalization of course but Peruvians LOVE their parades and have plenty experience with organizing them!

It went smoothly, all the students from the two schools participated with signs they had made, and then lined up in the plaza for some animated speeches by the teachers. Knowing that I had prepared a speech and knowing that my voice does not carry (anyone who knows me understands that my “loud, speaking voice” is appropriate for everyone else’s quieter “inside voice”), they decide that I should speak from the loudspeaker microphone on top of the Municipality building in front of all the students lined up in the plaza. A little unexpected and intimidating, given that I had expected a mellow little presentation inside before watching the video…but you have to go with the flow in Peace Corps, right?

Afterwards, we all entered the Municipality building to view the first 30 minutes of the movie. The kids really enjoyed it – when I got up to cut it short as the high school principal had recommended, everyone was very disappointed that we weren’t going to watch the full video, but more for the next occasion

Hasta luego,
Lauren



Middle school students and teachers participating in the community parade for Earth Day.

The view of me presenting from top of the Municipality building in the Plaza.



The high school students, with their beautiful signs, listening to my speech.


The middle school students, also with their signs, sitting in the other side of the Plaza to listen to my speech.





Hace 5 Meses en Mi Comunidad

So I realized the other day that I am approaching 6 months at site…aka ONE FOURTH of my 2 years of service! I remember when people told me how fast 2 years would fly by, I nodded in naive agreement, but seriously it has! What have I been doing all this time?

Well as expected the two years goes in waves of excitement with overwhelming busyness and lulls where you feel like you haven’t been doing anything. In the beginning of this year I was happily overwhelmed working on interviews and writing my community diagnostic (which will also be used to contribute a section of the community’s updated Plan of Development, and hence will need to be more “formal and scientific”), organizing a month of summer school classes (environmental education but also a mix of English, health and computing classes), helping SERNANP carry out a week’s worth of activities for Día de los Humedales (see earlier blog post) and accompanying someone from ECOAN (a NGO, “Ecosistemas Andinos”) on his monthly migratory bird monitoring near my community.

Unfortunately, recently has been one of my “lulls” where I have been doing far more planning and brainstorming than actual activities…but hey that’s how it goes right? Currently I have been coordinating a lot with the high school in my community. I am very fortunate to have very supportive director and teachers, and for this I am trying to take full advantage of the opportunity to incorporate “prácticos” (hands on/practical educational activities) into their curriculum. The second semester starts in the middle of May and the director agreed to start a recycling campaign. Originally, I viewed this as an opportunity to pilot a recycling campaign that I would love to extend to the municipality and the whole community, but in recent conversations with the director, I discovered that she is very enthusiastic to expand the project into more of a “healthy, environmentally conscious school” activity – separation of trash into recyclables, organics for worm composting, the rest to be deposited in a small landfill (“microrelleno”) and the construction of a greenhouse which will utilize the compost produced to grow flowers and trees…basically includes all of the aims the Community Based Environmental Management PCV program (education, trash management and forestation)! So if this goes as planned, the project will begin in the next month or so, and in time, the students will share their acquired knowledge with their families at home and the students’ work will provide a model that could be elaborated to include more of the general community.

As for activities that are more definitely established: with ECOAN and SERNANP, we will be giving a series of 8 monthly environmental talks in the middle and high schools on themes pertaining to conservation of the lake and the national reserve; I was invited to help with Club Ciencia (Science Club) in the high school which will be participating in a regional Science Fair competition for the first year, and starting the end of this week I will be helping administer the first bimonthly English oral exam with the English teacher in the high school.

Well that pretty much sums up the highlights

Hasta luego,
Lauren