VENTANAS ABIERTAS

So I have started my volunteering work (and have stopped going to Spanish classes).

Remember that apart from an old dream of living in and exploring Latin America and exploring the relationship with a girl that would change my life, I also came here to work as a volunteer.

Don’t ask me why or how exactly, but somehow I ended up with this project called VENTANAS ABIERTAS (http://openwindowsfoundation.com) and after a few weeks, I really feel like this is the project I was supposed to end up working with.

VENTANAS ABIERTAS (VA) is essentially a dynamic learning center for children from low income families in the little town of San Miguel Dueñas, ten miles from Antigua, Guatemala. With its many activities, it provides an educational support environment to more than 250 kids every day and a total of approximately 2,500 registered children from the area.

Seven permanent staff members and many volunteers provide the children with learning services and programs to help improve their options in life and to increase their self confidence and self sufficiency. Here, the children find a friendly and encouraging environment to help them be successful at school, so they can follow their dreams of a better life in the future.

VA have a reading room with a library that currently offers around 10,000 (donated) books, including picture books, fiction / non-fiction, and reference books as well as school text books that support the local school curriculum. Many of these children are first generation readers, so access to books is essential. The kids need to develop a sense of value for the book and its content and they need to find excitement in reading and learning… something that is not given in their families or communities.

reading room / library

two teachers preparing an afternoon activity at the library

Complementing school work, VA also offers educational support like tutoring and homework support as well as reinforcement classes in math, languages, accounting, etc. Furthermore, there are opportunities to participate in activities introducing motor skills, basic reading, writing, handwriting and spelling skills and most importantly ‘critical thinking skills’.

 improvised classrooms in the garage and in a tent just in front of the garage

A few years ago, VA initiated a computer lab here at the center with a few donated computers. Now, this lab has become an essential and very important part of the activities here. Many of the kids are using computers for the first time and it’s been opening up an entirely new world of opportunities for them. Children have access to basic computer classes specific to age groups as well as more advanced classes for older children, like MS Office courses.

this is the computer lab during one of the few quiet moments....

Every day, there are a number of activities here.

In interactive literacy activities, teachers bring books to life and children learn how to explore the story and content of a book through reading, writing, interpreting, etc. In related activities, the little ones can express the stories they heard through arts and crafting.

Other activities include guest presentations on different work areas, jobs or on important topics, like for example ‘how to recycle?’, which have the potential to initiate cultural changes or at least changes of perspective.

VA also provides an afternoon snack for the kids every day… because many of them do not necessarily receive regular food at home, so they suffer from malnutrition or are at least underfed.

this is where the kids put their bikes ... 250 kids, how many bikes?

kids taking a break

kids enjoying the afternoon snack

here you can see how the kids get their afternoon snack. 

this snack is called 'atol', a thick warm drink with lots of nutritious stuff in it...

Finally, VA is committed to send selected, talented and motivated children from low income families to middle and high school (in Switzerland: Sekundarschule). The idea is to break the cycle of poverty and allow children to pursue an education that will allow them to have a better job later and hence a better life in the future.

However, since the costs related to going to such schools are usually too high for the families here, they need sustainable financial support, otherwise they will prefer to send their kids to work.

So, we currently have around 50 children on a scholarship every year. A scholarship includes inscription fees, school uniforms, books and transport expenses to get to those schools and are around USD 500.—per kid, per year.

Again, you can find more information here:

http://openwindowsfoundation.com

the kids also learn basic social skills

And what does Patricito do in all of this, you ask?

Well, as unlikely as it may sound :) every afternoon I am giving math reinforcement classes to a few kids that really need it. This has been an interesting experience, because some of the things are so basic that I have issues explaining them to someone that doesn't have the capability to imagine the abstract idea of numbers on a line or why numbers can be positive and negative. But it's been a fun challenge.

Also, I am helping the center with fundraising. You might get contacted by me about that sometime soon. ;-)

Furthermore, I am helping to further develop the computer lab.

Up until recently, VA was using (very old) donated learning software programs with the kids in some of the classes. A very generous donation earlier this year allowed for a replacement of most of the (old) computers, but now we are facing a challenge. The new computers are all running Windows 8, and some – actually most – of the learning software we use are not running properly anymore.

So, one of my projects is to fix that.

Another one is the following: ..since the internet access here and in most places in Guatemala is very moderate at best, we are looking to bring a lot of offline content to the center using the Raspberry Pi technology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi). To do this we work with an NGO called World Possible (http://worldpossible.org/) that has compiled a lot of content (e.g. the entire Khan Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org/) video library or the entire Wikipedia in Spanish) and put it onto Raspberry Pi’s so as to make it available offline. 

If you don’t know what I am talking about, we are basically making a lot of very cool stuff available offline for the kids to access it here at VA. Another fun project.

And since I wasn't exactly made to be the perfect math teacher, I think this is also more the kind of stuff that I feel comfortable with and can actually add value…

Hopefully, this has given you an idea on what keeps me busy.

It’s a different type of busy than I had been used to in the last few years, though. And you wouldn’t believe it, but I really needed to get used to the very different pace of living and working here.

To this day, I feel like I am not doing enough and things are not moving fast enough.

Keep in touch and more from me soon. 

MY FIRST FEW WEEKS

Dear reader

I know, it’s been a while. 

And I understand that to write a blog kind of implies writing more regular updates. I will try to be better at this de hoy en adelante (going forward).

The thing is, it’s not that nothing worth writing about has happened. Quite the opposite, actually.

So, today I’ll try and give you a few ideas about my life here in the last few weeks..

Mi casa

My house – well the house I call my home for now – is a typical house in Antigua Guatemala. From the outside, you can see a wall and a door, more or less ugly, and that's it. But as soon as you step through the door, it’s like entering a new world.

In my case it’s a beautiful old colonial house with the typical interior garden with looooots of plants. Around this garden, there’s like a passway with arcades in U-shape, which kind of serves as the living room. There’s usually no real living room inside, because the climate allows for people to sit outside most of the time during the year. And around that, you’ll find a number of rooms which serve as bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens or like in our case, the kitchen is outside as well.. so there’s really only bedrooms and bathrooms around the whole thing.

My host family is fairly small and consists of my host mom Elsa – a really nice older lady, that has quickly turned into my substitute mother – who is cooking, cleaning, ironing my shirts and generally taking care of me in a very cute way and her security chick (see last post). Elsa is really the cutest lady ever, who loves to talk, so I always have someone to practice my Spanish with during breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as at any other time.

Elsa 

 Our 'living room' and eating space

 My bedroom 

Recent weekends

Two weeks ago, we had a long weekend – Friday was a day off – so Nancy and I decided to take advantage of this and travel a little bit.

On Friday, on our way to Lago Atitlan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lago_de_Atitlán) 

we passed by the town of Sumpango with its famous Kite Festival (there will be a specific post about this soon), a really amazing celebration of the art of kite making and kite flying.

We then drove all the way to Panajachel 

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panajachel) 

and from there, we had to take a little boat – a lanchita – which brought us to our hotel for the weekend in about 15mins.

We were lucky, because we pretty much just arrived to the boat place, when one of the boats was leaving (sometimes you have to wait up to 30mins until the boat is full and the captain is ready to leave), but the problem was that we didn’t really have a place to sit anymore. So we sat in the front of the boat… and only after a few minutes, we realized that the boat had a little leakage in the front, so I arrived at our hotel with a bit of a wet backside.

no comments, pls :)

The hotel was absolutely beautiful (http://islaverdeatitlan.com/), 

an eco-lodge situated directly at the lake, but integrated into the mountains surrounding it, with stunning views, great food and a really cute private bungalow, or rather ‘hut’, with an ‘open air’ shower and toilet we called our home for the 2 nights.

view from the room

bathroom and right next to it...

 ... the shower

our little bungalow integrated into the forest

a chill out area

our room 

the view from the restaurant

We explored the area and a few of the villages around the lake and simply enjoyed each other’s company, the great healthy food and the beauty and silence of the nature at the lake.

For the weekend one week ago, Nancy’s family decided – like on Thursday – that we were going to spend the weekend at the beach. Of course I didn’t mind at all. The entire family went… Nancy’s parents, brother and sister and the sister’s boyfriend. And I. :)

There’s only little I can say about this weekend .. it was nearly perfect. A bungalow directly at the (black) beach, with a Swimming pool and direct access to the beach.

The weather was nice most of the time – we did have a quick shower period – and we just chilled in the hammock, around or in the pool, went for a little walk along the beach or otherwise ate, drank and played games. It was so much fun! I really felt part of the family, which was excellent.

The beach or rather the sand has a very specific color.. almost black. I don’t think I have ever seen a beach like this, but looking at the amount of volcanoes in this country, it’s not entirely surprising that the beach would be black because of the volcanic soil. Very interesting.

Oh and another thing that is interesting is that here you can rent a house and it comes with a person that does all the cooking, cleaning and everything… so it felt much more like a 5-star experience than it probably would have otherwise.

 view from the house 

please do notice the pool, the beach right behind it as well as the hammocks. thank you!

'black' sand 

OK... big hugs to y'all. I am off to yet another wedding tonight. :)

More about that at a later time.

Also, I have started my volunteering work. That's another post coming up soon. Stay tuned!!

Much love