Wednesday, April 18, 2007

A month later...

My Beekeeping project was just approved a few days ago! I will get about $6,000 in order to help between 25-35 people get started producing honey and other bee-made products. It is exciting, becuase this is an opportunity to help people see a real, concrete change. They will have a new skill, make some more money, have an improved diet, be organized into grassroots organizations (which I will hopefully be able to then encourage to fight for some other community improvements). -- That is my hope anyway for this project. Time will tell.

I am also really excited and encouraged by the teenagers that I am working with. In only a few months we have been able to do a lot and we have quite a few opportunities that are right on the horizon. My kids are now teaching about 10 women to read and write and they have formed a larger dance team (before it was about 6 girls... now it is those 6, plus 6 guys and 6 other guys that play the music to which they dance (Total 18 ... plus their 18 year-old coordinator and me). The 8 in my ¨leadership group¨ had the chance to give a presentation to a woman that is the equivalent of a Secretary of the national goverment (think - Secretary of State)and the dance group presented before the Ecuadorian President (Rafeal Correa).

Now I have the chance to teach them how to use the internet (we have been offered the use of 6 computers with internet access), but the problem is that we don`t have the ability to GET there. Bus transportation is very limited and it is expensive if you don`t take a bus. Therefore, I am about $30 a week short of offering my kids the opportunity to access all of the information in the entire world... I don`t think that any of my kids have ever accessed the internet before. Can you imagine that? How many of you are reading this from your house? Did you just get finished accessing the newspaper online or doing a websearch about some question that was bugging you... are you going to communicate with people all over the country by email when you get done reading this...?

Well... enough about work stuff.

Julia Johncock (a great friend from college) came down and visited me during Easter week. The contest for the first visitor has been won... it was super fun booking around the country with her. We stayed at tropical paradise beach and walked down the way a little to another beach with crazy fine, black sparkling sand! Then we came back and visited my town, just in time to dance until the morning (actually, we left at 4am, but the rest of town definitly dance until the sun came up). I guess that was their version of a Sunrise Service... it was Easter Sunday morning.

posted by Steve @ 7:29 AM