As a start to
the New Year we all have a number of resolutions I'm sure. They may be to run
off that Peace Corps 15 and cross our fingers that after reading Born to Run we will be encouraged to do
so. Perhaps we will try to maintain our personal hygiene. Or pasear to at least 10 houses a week. One
resolution that I would love to encourage is to recognize successes and share
success stories. I was a little discouraged when I asked a Volunteer what her
greatest success had been so far and she said that she didn't feel that she had
experienced any success. She had been in country for over a year and didn't
consider any of her relationships, personal growth, language skills, environmental
assessment, or any of her work successful? Little did she know that she created
a foundation for my greatest success story. She struggled with Spanish and with
relationships in our community, but her groundwork led to the phenomenal
success that I have experienced.
My Successes:
The former Volunteer
in my community encouraged and trained two kiosks to recycle. This led to my
Environmental Assessment community meeting three months into site and community
members asking for a community wide project “para mejorar el manejo de basura en la comunidad", credited to
the former Volunteer.
The success of
the community’s current waste management project is great. Membrillo now has a
Recycling Committee
that has hosted 18 recycling days. The committee hosts recycling collection
days at the community’s local school every two weeks. Community members are
encouraged to bring all of their recycling items which are counted, separated
and transported to the local recycling center just south of Penonome. The
committee has a contract with Recimetal and pays for the transportation out of
the recycling money earned, which earns anywhere between 43 and 104 dollars.
Typically, over 10 community volunteers help count and separate the recycling.
Classrooms and students are rewarded with small prizes for their participation.
The biggest prize this last school year was the option to participate in a
science field trip to Panama City for the 40 recycling stars that recycled the
most during the school year.
Our "most
valuable recycler" last year was five year old, Roderick Chavez who happened
to recycle over 5,000 recycling items which included batteries, aluminum cans,
tetrapak, newspaper, white plastic bags, and food/milk cans. One class of 12
pre-kindergarteners recycled over 19,000 recycling items last school year. The
culmination of all of the recycling committee’s success this last year was the
science field trip that the committee held on December 4th, 2012. Forty-one
recycling stars, the school principal, a teacher, the Committee President and
Vice President and 14 parents attended our first recycling projects "Recycling
Super Stars Science Field Trip." We left Coclé for our first museum, the
Smithsonian at Punta Culebra. Just crossing over the Puente de Las Americas, I
wished everyone could have seen the pure excitement on the students faces. Touching
the star fish and sea cucumbers, learning about coral reefs, and watching the
students interact with the museum docents was absolutely incredible. After our
tour, all 60 of us traveled to the second museum for the day, Explora. The
group enjoyed 3 hours at this wonderful discovery museum that teaches about Newton’s
laws, how a twister forms, deforestation in Panama, the importance of conservation,
and so much more. The students were absolutely captivated by every station we
went to. They especially loved the planetarium and the gravitational pull room,
which shifts individuals’ centers of gravity. They were so happy and
participatory. These students and their parents’ hard work had significantly
reduced the amount of waste in the community, they have become well versed in
waste management and I hope will continue to participate in the project for
years to come. Their level of consciousness has changed and that is one of my
greatest successes. They are now aware of the small change they can each
individually make to protect our community’s environment, as well as the
communities that surround us.
This year, let's
encourage success, whether it’s something that is tangible or intangible.
Perhaps successfully using the subjunctive or pluscuamperfecto or making a reservation over the phone at Urraca
can be a success. Being able to eat anything that is placed in front of you can
be a success. Helping a close friend build a compost latrine or successfully
growing tomatoes are successes and should be recognized as so. Doctor Paul Farmer, of Partners in
Health, believes that, "lives of service depend on lives of support."
So let's support one another this year and inspire one another by sharing and
supporting each other’s successes and or failures. We have two years; let's
make the most of them.
