"One day work is hard, and another day it is easy; but if I had waited for inspiration I am afraid I should have done nothing. The miner does not sit at the top of the shaft waiting for the coal to come bubbling up to the surface. One must go deep down, and work out every vein carefully."
-Arthur Sullivan
Valid question. Looking back on my posts I have not really gone over at all what my day to day work entails. I suppose it is because it is a little bit hard to explain. But I’ll try.
I arrived in Colombia through the Mennonite Church and the Mennonite Central Committee (See blog on Anabaptism) with a program called SEED (See SEED website, our SEED blogs, or SEED facebook). After two months of a crash course in Colombian history, politics, and conflict, we were sent out into different communities to work with different organizations and churches that work for peace in Colombia.
I was sent to the Caribbean Coast to work with an organization called Sembrandopaz (website, blog, facebook). Sembrandopaz focuses on supporting four different communities in peace processes, social development, and economic advancement. I was sent to live in one of these communities (Libertad) and help support another (Mampujan). Living in one town, supporting another, and having the office in a third ,Sincelejo, definitely makes for a lot traveling.
My main community of focus is the one I live in, Libertad.
In Libertad my principle job is to support the Community Counsel. The Community Counsel is a group of people from the community that propose and carry out projects in the community, fight for the rights of the community and its advancement, and in general support the community. My job is to support these people. And these people are AWESOME! They are my group of friends here and they are pretty fun! I support them by organizing meetings, helping to write letters, reminding people when we have meetings, and helping to brainstorm ways to support, advance, and protect the community. There are meetings with either the entire counsel or small groups working on different projects pretty much every day. I am certainly learning a ton.
Consejo Meeting |
Another way that we support the counsel is by doing workshops for them. Right now we are teaching a Transformative Education course that should last about a year. It touches on conflict analysis, identity, basic needs, human rights, and project implementation. It’s pretty awesome but I always finish the workshop exhausted.
An activity during a workshop with the Consejo |
Another way that I am sharing my skills as a therapist is through supporting a few kiddos in the community that are going through some challenges and struggles. I don’t pretend to be holding official therapy sessions or anything, but we work through some things together while we bake or color. Or I share some different parenting ideas or tips with parents that are looking for some support with their kids. Sometime this is complicated or difficult due to differences in culture, parenting styles, and language, but it is always interesting!
Frisbee is an important part of my job in Libertad (at least from my point of view). First of all, Ultimate is an awesome game that teaches team work, respect, honesty, self control, and good sportsmanship. Second of all, it is new and different and gives the youth something to do. Third of all, it is fun. Fourth of all, I need to play in order to stay sane. The kids of the town have really jumped on the game and we have already split six discs. (Thank goodness Ken, Pete, Alison, Kelly, and the new MCC interns have helped me get more Frisbees because there was a time when we had broken all the discs in Libertad and could not play!) I have started a loaning system (like a library for Frisbees) and kids are consistently passing by to borrow a disc. Because of all the meetings that I have with the counsel, I don’t get to play that often any more, but I jump on every chance I get. The next goal is to plan a tournament… (Seriously, if anyone is interested in helping organize this and planning a little trip to Libertad, I’m listening…)
FRISBEE! |
Two Consejo members in Mampujan |
That’s a pretty good summary of it… there are so many other random things that I end up doing as well like attending other organizations’ meetings, participating in random workshops, trying to do the readings and homeworks from the SEED program…
Play practice for an event with the Consejo |
Basically my job rocks. :)
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