About 25 minutes away from the house by car you will find a beautiful Mariposario with lots and lots of butterflies. If you lick your hand or bring a bit of honey with you, they will be all over you!
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Teach them how to fish
Working with hands to make dolls and sell them to earn income. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Day Five: Manos de Esperanza
When we arrived there, we met with Jorge and his wife who were helping American couple Matt and Shelly with the organization.
Their main focus was on the community, social stability and possibly planting a church in the future.
Some of the projects could include:
- Teaching
- Construction
- Fund/Cloth raising
- Sport camps for youth
- Medical
- Agriculture
- Ministry
- Micro business
- .... and many many more..... the opportunities are endless
After a quick talk about who Emerging Voices are and where we would like to to help, Matt, Shelly, Gloria, Jorge and I took off to visit a few houses to see what could be done.
That was incredible. People live in places that luck basic sanitary conditions.
To get more information about Manos de Esperanza, go to http://actisfamily.blogspot.com/p/actis-family-official-webpage.html
or
https://sites.google.com/site/actisfamilyministry/
Day Four: Live and Learn
When people start volunteering they feel like they are there to teach and give. Little we know about how much we actually learn and receive by doing the service to others.
For the past four days I have been working with the disabled children doing physical therapy and helping in a swimming-pool. The most I learned is that you can't go to work with your complexes, problems, sad face and bad attitude.
You have to open your heart and spit out the truth about yourself; otherwise, how are they going to trust you? In the water there is an exceptional feeling of trust. If you let them go or they don't trust you, they can't go to the middle of the swimming pool with you, can't relax and float in the water, or learn how to swim.
I love my job more the more I work with them.
The best thing about the class was that a swimming teacher taught me how to swim. I knew the doggy and the froggy style and now I can swim for real like a Ukrainian swimming champ!
For the past four days I have been working with the disabled children doing physical therapy and helping in a swimming-pool. The most I learned is that you can't go to work with your complexes, problems, sad face and bad attitude.
You have to open your heart and spit out the truth about yourself; otherwise, how are they going to trust you? In the water there is an exceptional feeling of trust. If you let them go or they don't trust you, they can't go to the middle of the swimming pool with you, can't relax and float in the water, or learn how to swim.
I love my job more the more I work with them.
The best thing about the class was that a swimming teacher taught me how to swim. I knew the doggy and the froggy style and now I can swim for real like a Ukrainian swimming champ!
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Day Three: One Step At a Time
Today was a fairly productive day. I woke up at 5:45am, run and exercised for an hour, had arrepa and coffee for breakfast, talked to Monica via skype and at 2pm was out of the door to Covida.
**** Covida is the place with special education kids where I will be working helping in the swimming pool.
When I arrived, the lady at the front door told me I should come back at 5pm. What do I do in three hours? So I went for a walk to the downtown area. I still have no idea how big this town is but when I was walking and run into one of Gloria's nephews on the street, I figured it was fairly small.
I also found a dance school where you can learn anything from ballet to Arabic dance for $35 for 7 hours of private lesson or take a rumba terapia for $17/month for 2 hours/week. I might sign up.
When I arrived to Covida at 4pm, the director invited me to do physical therapy with the kids. To be honest, never thought you have to be yourself pretty strong to do it. We had to lift kids and run around but the time flew by. It was just a bunch of playing on the mats.
The swimming pool started at 5pm and there I was helping one little girl to swim and dive. For me who doesn't like to put the head into the water it was also a good practice and challenge.
The best thing about all the day is that the professors in Codiva receive you as one of them and explain in what and how I cold help the kids. And of course, when you see the shiny eyes of the kiddos, you can't resist to come back again.
Watching the kids from the street
**** Covida is the place with special education kids where I will be working helping in the swimming pool.
When I arrived, the lady at the front door told me I should come back at 5pm. What do I do in three hours? So I went for a walk to the downtown area. I still have no idea how big this town is but when I was walking and run into one of Gloria's nephews on the street, I figured it was fairly small.
I also found a dance school where you can learn anything from ballet to Arabic dance for $35 for 7 hours of private lesson or take a rumba terapia for $17/month for 2 hours/week. I might sign up.
When I arrived to Covida at 4pm, the director invited me to do physical therapy with the kids. To be honest, never thought you have to be yourself pretty strong to do it. We had to lift kids and run around but the time flew by. It was just a bunch of playing on the mats.
The swimming pool started at 5pm and there I was helping one little girl to swim and dive. For me who doesn't like to put the head into the water it was also a good practice and challenge.
The best thing about all the day is that the professors in Codiva receive you as one of them and explain in what and how I cold help the kids. And of course, when you see the shiny eyes of the kiddos, you can't resist to come back again.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Day Two: Planting the seed
Planting the seed is always the most thrilling part of the job.
This morning we went to talk to the director of Social work in Armenia. She was excited to meet us and more excited that we were there to help. Apparently, she had tons of projects for us to work on but wanted us to meet with the rest of the “social work” team to present about Emerging Voices.
That will be done next week but meanwhile Gloria and I decided to visit a few other organizations to see if I can start working tomorrow. When you travel, have little time but lots of desire to help, you can’t waist time waiting for a 20 minute meeting when you can start doing something good right now.
So there we were:
1st place: Fenacorsol IPS (the rehab for Drug addicts) There I would teach English and Zumba, or some sort of exercise class.
2nd place: Covida (Special Ed Kids) I would help the autism, mentally and physically challenge kids with swimming lessons and physical therapy as well.
I loved both of places and in both organizations there was a lot of potential for volunteer work and possibility to start helping that same minute.
So what did I do? – went a got an Olympic style swimming suite to start working tomorrow!
I am very excited and can’t wait to share more about the experience.
The place for people with drugs and alcohol addiction
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