i'm on my way

As Rusted Root so eloquently sings – “I’m on my way”. I presented my diagnostic findings yesterday to a room full of community and school members – teachers, policemen, ADESCO members (kind of like the city council), a nurse from the local health clinic and students. These past 6 weeks I have been interviewing community members and observing classes to get a better idea of what projects are desired in the community. After my boss from Peace Corps talked for a little bit, I gave a brief introduction of myself and then launched right in. I started with the specific data gathered from the interviews. I ended up interviewing 54 families, (or 245 people) which was my goal, but not even a 10th of the households in this community! I would like to think that my data can be a rough estimation of the community as a whole, but a 10% response rate is not statistically adequate if I remember anything from stats class. Anyhow, for the families interviewed, 60% are male-headed households. This surprised me, considering how many husbands, brothers, and fathers are in the states – but I think a couple of those male heads of households are grandpas, and it’s more symbolic than anything, ‘cause mom really runs the whole show! It’s an interesting study in women empowerment. Yes, there is still machismo, but more and more women are raising their kids all on their own and gaining incredible independence because of it.

I also covered average education levels. For all people interviewed, the average grade obtained was 5th. 20-39 year olds have an average of 8th grade, 40-59 year olds have an average of 4th grade, and 60-90 year olds have an average of 1st grade. I fudged the last set to include more ages because it allowed me to have about the same number of people in each division, and it also didn’t change the average at all to include the 80-90 years olds (also because there are only 4 of them or so). The teachers present at the presentation were really pleased to see that data set! Their work is paying off! 23 families – or 42% - receive remesas, which seems a little low from what I can tell, but I think some people had pena (shame) in telling me whether they receive them or not. More than 40% of the people interviewed are under the age of 18 (42% or 104 to be specific.)

After covering those and other statistics, I launched into the section about needs identified in the community. I was grateful to my host-mom/counterpart for helping me come up with that term. I was looking for a way to say – things to work on in the community – without saying “problems”. I think in the end it came across really objective and fair. I presented the needs that were discussed in the interviews, and then presented ideas for dealing with these needs. For instance, garbage management is a big deal that pretty much all community members mentioned. Some of the ideas generated are to gestionar (work for, or towards) garbage bins and trash pickup in the community, as well as charlas (chats) about proper garbage management, recycling, composting, and reducing use of disposable containers.

Another need that was identified that I really hope to focus on is environmental conscience. I think that if we can work towards educating the kids and the community to see their environment (in all it's physical, biological and socio-cultural senses) as something to be respected and also to be proud of, achieving the other more concrete changes will be a little easier. You can tell people ‘till you’re blue in the face not to throw their trash on the ground, but if they don’t first have the appreciation for what that garbage on the ground will do, it won’t matter how many times you tell them. One of the ways I would like to increase the environmental conscientiousness here is with trips to local natural areas and parks. I think they will help the kids see that El Salvador has plenty of places to be proud of as well as open their eyes to the reality that there is so much more (literally and figuratively) out there than they know.

I continued with other needs identified in the community – home gardens (yay for vegetables!), planting trees everywhere and anywhere (yay for shade!), compost (yay for helpful bugs!), as well as general health (yay for exercise!) I’ve offered myself up for leading exercise classes or something. The nurse from the health clinic seemed really happy about that, as well as other parts of the presentation, so we’ll see where that goes in terms of networking! In the end I opened it up for questions. I didn’t really get any questions, but I got lots of “felicitaciones” (congratulations). The police were really excited that I mentioned delinquency as one of the areas in which I would like to work. The police are under lots of pressure on a national level to control delinquency. As of the beginning of October, I believe, there have been more homicides in 2009 than in all of 2008. I think it works out to about 13 a day? Anyway, there were calls for the national police chief to step down, and calls that this is proof the new government (leftist, first in 29 years or something) can’t be trusted to do anything right because they’ve actually allowed an increase in homicides. So, now the national army has been called to start patrolling with the local police forces to try and control the situation. That being said, they are looking for any ideas about how to control delinquency from the front end, as much as from the tail end. It felt really good to share the information I’ve been gathering and have it validated.

The people in attendance expressed their gratitude for having everything so well laid out. The nurse commented that for only being here for 6 weeks, I hit the nail exactly on the head with regards to the needs of the community! And the President of the ADESCO was grateful that I was able to express everything so clearly with the needs presented first, and then immediately followed them with ideas to address those needs. I think that will be one of my keys to productivity. Every time we discuss “problems”, which is a word I really don’t like, I want to reinforce the presence of solutions. (No negative Nancys here!) That’s what I’m working on right now with the Guardianes Ambientales. We’ve been identifying problems in the community, but also discussing the causes, effects and solutions. It seems to be a really fruitful discussion.

So all that being said, I really feel like I’m on my way. I have a work plan of activities that I’m excited to work on, and I presented it to community representatives, and they seemed jazzed about it as well. Of course each person had their own “pet” project they seemed to really like, but I hope that means I will have lots of help from lots of different people on each project.