Fundraisers, Infomercials and Futbol

It might sound like these three topics don't mesh well together, but that, in chronological order, is exactly how we spent our weekend.  Mid-afternoon on Saturday we headed to a fundraiser for the church of Rumiloma.  The building had been knocked down sometime last year and the community has been slowly renovating it, but unable to get very far due to lack of funds.  As we walked into the courtyard and found a half dozen tents, a full band on a covered stage, and some of our favorite library kids running up to greet us.  We wandered through the crowd, some of us ordering Cuy while others watched a clown sporting over-sized plastic American flag shoes sing to a woman for her 100th birthday  (and shamelessly point out the ten gringos lingering in the background). 

Being greeted by some kids in the community

Watching the impressive (and well dressed!) band

Mike and Chet enjoy their cuy (a.k.a. guinea pig, an Ecuadorian delicacy) 

After stuffing ourselves with cuy and chochos we caught a bus into Quito to scalp some futbol tickets.  Although we're accustomed to people hopping on buses and sell everything from Bon Ice to historical dvds (guilty of buying both), the man that hopped on our bus had a talent that most lack.  I'm not sure if it was his thought-provoking riddles or straight up charm, but he somehow convinced at least half of the people on our bus, including Krysta, to buy a family indestructible tiny Snoopy keychains.  How do we know they were destructible, you might ask?  The salesman threw it on the bus floor (lick any of those lately to avoid going to Jersey, Seth?) and stomped all over it to demonstrate.  

A clan of snoopies... enough said.

The rest of us were happy to spend our allowance on futbol tickets, avoiding the ploys of a Billy Mays in the making.  La Liga Deportiva, the club team we've become partial to, played against el Deportivo de Quito.  Though our team lost 3-0, we thoroughly enjoyed waving around Liga flags and jumping around with the rest of the fans and chanting "esta noche tenemos que ganar!" (at least that's the only part of the cheer I remember). 

Liga fans loyally chanting for their team 

The girls attempt to chime in with the fight songs

Until next time, 

Jackie 

Teen Center Goals and Vision

(Today's guest blog was written by Mr. Mike Gabrys. Mike is famous - to me, at least - for making sure people don't fall down Pichincha when hiking, and for holding the in-house record for longest time sporting a mustache... out of the boys, of course. Enjoy!)

Mike playing a game of "piedritas" with Gisela

"I'm Mike, the fifth guest blogger. I hale from Northville, Michigan, which is a suburb of Detroit. After spending the last six years at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, I have developed an appetite for live country music that I'm finding difficult to satiate here. I like to run, ride my bike, eat toast, and beat Erik in chess.

This year, I'll be working with the library program with Jackie, and the Teen Center with Shawn. As Jackie has given you some insight into the direction the library is headed, I'm going to focus on the Teen Center.

As you hopefully already know, this past weekend we had a back-to-school party for Teen Center. All the arrangements- music, speakers, snacks, decorations, and publicity- were handled by the teens themselves. This not only made our job easier (after all, I'm still struggling with the language) but also allowed the teens to take ownership of the party, which contributes to fulfilling the goals of the Teen Center. For awhile Shawn and I doubted if the teens would pull through, but in the end, everything worked out.

The teen center serves as a place where older youth in our communities to socialize, free of the influences of alcohol.  The Teen Center also seeks to develop teens as leaders, offer supplemental educational opportunities, and integrate neighborhood cliques. A major component of this is the Teen Board. The board is in charge of planning events and outings, like the party last weekend; selecting topics for panel discussions we will have later in the year; and opening the Teen Center when a profe isn't there. The members are selected by peers to represent the different groups that come to the center.

This year we hope to build on the success of last year and the work of Seth and previous PDs by making the space more engaging for teens.  This includes having more things to do, more ways to interact with one another, and offering this space as a safe place to talk about issues facing teenagers.  This will take some time, but as we've seen already, the teens can pull together and accomplish the task if they've set their minds to it.

Along with the library, we are writing a grant proposal for furniture, magazine subscriptions, and stimulative games. Additional items we would appreciate are on our Amazon.com Wishlist; we continually add to it, so check back often.

The past few weeks have afforded everybody in the house an opportunity to meet and get to know the teens. They are a great group, and I look forward to updating their progress throughout the year.

-Mike"

Manna Discotec, Arriba!

This past Saturday night, co-teen center gurus Shawn Fagan and Mike Gabrys put on a successful back to school event for the jovenes in our community.  They decided to make it pretty much entirely run by the teens, from the music selections, to purchasing food, to advertising.  In order to plan for the event, the two weeks previous were filled with nightly meetings in the teen center and afternoons of aspiring DJs uploading music onto our library computers.  They decided to utilize the space above our library, deemed ¨the third floor¨ for lack of a better name, which is used for various classes during the week. 

After an invigorating day of climbing churches and attending soccer games in the community, the rest of us popped into the teen center to help out and bust some moves.  As we walked into the front door of our building all we could hear was the repetative¨oomst oomst¨of the base from above.  At first, kids were scattered between the second and third floors, a little unsure of what to do (probably pretty frightened by six gringo girls, standing in a circle and re-enacting women's exercise moves). But soon enough, with a little nudge from a light dimmer, all of the kids made their way to the dance floor. 

 

Dry erase boards point the jovenes in the right direction

Our two master DJs for the evening


Mike and Chet talk to the teens as they walk in


Christian, one of the teens, teaches us girls how to Salsa

Overall the event was a huge success, giving teens the freedom to plan their own party and most importantly, giving them a safe space to socialize on a Saturday night.  For more information about the teen center's plans for the upcoming year, tune into on Thursday for a guest blog by Mr. Mike Gabrys (or as the kids refer to him, prof. mickey mouse). 

Cheers, 

Jackie

Our Saturday Adventure

Yesterday, 5 of the MPIE girls decided to spend Saturday reliving their days in Quito as tourists by climbing to the top of the infamous Basilica in Centro Historico. After an overcrowded ride in the Ecovia, a missed stop (my bad...), and lots of spiral staircases and ladders, we made it to the top. And the view definitely didn't disappoint. Here's a small glimpse into our tacky tourist lives as seen by the MannaCam (who still remains nameless).

MPIE girls select the "boy band pose" in front of the stained glass window. Solid choice, team.

Jackie, Sonia, Krysta and Haley check out the view after the first set of stairs

Sonia takes a breather after the last ladder on the floor that resembles chicken wire.
(It's more sturdy than that, I promise)

Me looking out over the ledge from the top of one of the spires

Climbing the next set of ladders to the belfry

The view from the bottom of the ladder - gargoyles and the beautiful sky

Haley checks out the graffiti at the top of the belfry
PS. Happy Anniversary Haley and Dave! :)

The group at the end - sufficiently tired and ready to trek back to the valley

Now off to get some work done before the weekly 3M (Monday Morning Meeting)... Programs start tomorrow! Exciting days ahead!

Thanks for checking in,
Sarah

Un Abrazo de Marco

Apologies for skipping a post yesterday.. we've been spending our post-dinner evenings learning about each other's life maps, which is usually prime blogging time.  Life maps are basically an account of anything and everything important that has happened to you, from birth to present.  It's become something we really look forward to as each PDs recounts a detailed picture of how we all ended up here in Ecuador.  

More details on that to follow, but for now, here is a parting guest blog from none other than Mr. Mark Hand, our former Country Director.  We miss you Mark, and hope your road trip is going well! 

"To my dear friends and family:

After two years in Ecuador with Manna Project International, I’ve hung up my cleats. I have landed safely in Shreveport, had my first (and tenth) Southern Maid Donut, my first encounter with an old Magnet High schoolmate in Barnes and Noble, and begun slowly to relearn the rules of the American road. I leave my work in Ecuador in the capable hands of Bibi Al-Ebrahim, a former Peace Corps Volunteer and Tulane public health graduate who replaced me as Ecuador Country Director last month.

At the close of this two-year journey, I want to thank you and your family for your gracious support of a project you may have understood only in vague terms when it began. Admittedly, when I first asked for your help in the summer of 2007, I had only a rough outline of how I would spend the next two years of my life. Your confidence inspired and challenged me to make these two years count and pushed me along in more difficult moments.

I would like to take the opportunity to describe how your donations and my time in Ecuador were spent. Upon first landing, MPI-E’s founding team inherited a skeletal mission: to create a community of young volunteers who would live in service to a "community in need" in the developing world. We were invited to work in a valley southeast of Ecuador’s capital, Quito. We began slowly, with an after-school program and English courses.

Very quickly, we had to discard many of the assumptions we brought with us to Ecuador. This was a lower-class community, to be sure, but children were not starving. The neighborhoods of San Francisco, Rumiloma and Tena were full of people already working to better their own communities. What constructive role could a handful of young, eager, Spanish-learning Americans play here?

Our answer was simple: we could build up, connect and support those Ecuadorian institutions, networks and people already in action. We set to work connecting a locally owned cooperative to microfinance training; we began talks with a school/foster home to open a health clinic; we helped a teacher and entrepreneur develop his English curriculum. The shift from talking about communities in terms of ‘need’ to talking about them in terms of assets and resources allowed us to see people as actors rather than clients.

Missing in our grand new scheme, however, was a sensitivity to the valley’s edifices of trust and power. After a year and half, we were still an unknown quantity: the nice gringos who taught kids’ classes in the community center, but little more. In communities where traditional ideas of trust (confianza) and authority run deep, the library and teen-center which we launched in March of 2009 granted us the presence necessary to approach larger institutions, provided a platform for building personal relationships, and created spaces in which to experiment with educational programming – like our art class, one result of which I’ve included with this letter.

The library and teen center have met enormous success, even as Bibi’s new crop of volunteers determines their role in the valley’s development. For my part, I leave Ecuador having learned how to be a plumber, mediator, volunteer coordinator, librarian, US embassy warden, disciplinarian, and entrepreneur. My own path remains an open question. I’ll be traveling in the US for two months to visit old friends and am looking toward graduate school in 2011. The last two years have prepared me for just about anything, an opportunity for which I thank you all dearly!

Un abrazo (A warm embrace),

Mark Hand"