25/09/10

I recently revamped my REDES group here and it has since been a huge success. Before I had tailored the group for the girls of the orphanage, but this meant that the meeting times were not conducive to most students of the school who live outside because they had to walk home in the dark. Because I felt like the girls from the orphanage where wasting the opportunity and taking advantage of me, I completely changed the group, meeting at times that were better for girls who would have to walk home after and inviting student from the school. It has been a huge success. I took five of these new girls to the conference a few weekends ago, stressing that this was also a huge responsibility because after the conference I needed them to be the animators for the rest of the group, relating to the other girls the things they had learned at the conference, as well as generally getting girls excited about going to meetings and participating during the meetings. They have gone above and beyond my hopes. The first meeting after the conference was an absolute pleasure, watching these girls excitedly describe every second of their weekend. They also, without any prompting, brought up some of the topics from the conference and posed thought-provoking questions to the group about them, starting wonderful discussions. We have begun to make earrings which we will sell—a project that teaches them a usable skill, as well as walking through the basics of income generation and how to design a profitable income generation project. We are hoping to continue the electronic interchange with the group from Brazil, though that is not a huge priority for me until the group is more firmly established. Future plans include a lot of career planning sessions, from inviting the Inharrime chief of police and doctor (both women!), a nurse, a sister, and others to come talk about the path they took to get there, to visiting places like the institution for formation of health (hospital technicians) in Inhambane.
At a meeting this past week one of the girls brought up my dancing, referencing one of the many spontaneous dance parties Ann and I started at the conference, some of them to music, many of them not. The girls had been asking why I wasn’t making earrings too and I told them that it wasn’t my project, but theirs. When I promised I would bring music to the next meeting one of the girls got a huge smirk on her face and said “at the next meeting teacher we can make the earrings and you can just dance for us.”