Gender and Development Camp, Peace Corps Panama at its best

file://localhost/Users/soniaesquibel/Desktop/Seminario%20Juventil.mov

If not, its on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1-HbZ2BKAA, youtube name: Seminario Juventil

I hope you are able to watch the slide show above. If not I am also uploading it to youtube as well. Pictures are worth a thousand words, but I still need to share my initial reactions to the project that I just carried out. 

To all that donated to the project, Thank you. I wish you all could have been there to see it with your own eyes. It was truly the ultimate "feel good" experience. We were offering these students an experience that they had never had before. Every Panamanian agency kept saying how rare and unique it was and that they should aprovecharlo, take advantage of it and enjoy it to the fullest. And I genuinely feel that the youth did take advantage of this experience and that they all had an amazing time. Our last night one of the most participatory students shared that she hated "despedidas (goodbyes)" and i apologized and told her unfortunately that's what we had planned for the evening. 

In total we had 31 Panamanian Youth attend camp and we had the help of 12 phenomenal Peace Corps Volunteers--Beth, Tali, Danielle, Amber, Kendra, Ruth, Chelsea, Alex, Nick, Andrew, and Whitney. Without these volunteers, the camp wouldn't have been possible. All of these volunteers went above and beyond. 

Thank you to all of the donors! Muchisimas gracias! More to come! 

Be the Change

The Ask: Soliciting funding for a Youth Leadership Camp this May 24-May 28^th 2013

Peace Corps is an exercise in Patience and Perseverance. We come in with all of these expectations, especially me. Several people have told me that I need to lower my expectations. I need to become less of an optimist and more of a realistic optimist. I feel like I am beginning to understand that, especially with my last project as a Peace Corps volunteer.

I am trying to host a youth camp for 40 kids; I have mentioned this in previous blogs. I never could have imagined though how much work needs to go into this. I have to coordinate with other volunteers to make sure that their youth are still interested. I need to coordinate with Panamanian agencies for lectures and resources. And I need to fundraise both within country and back home to host the camp.

I believe all of this work is worth the effort. These 40 kids will be facing a lot in the next few years. They will be facing challenges that are in many regards cultural issues. Just in the province that I work in, 50 percent of new mothers are ages 17-21.  The poverty rate in panama is 36.8 percent, which means 4 out off every 10 Panamanians are living in poverty. And 54 percent of Panamanian children below 6 years of age are living in poverty. These youth face teenage pregnancy and poverty problems. This camp is Peace Corps Panama’s attempt to modify and empower these youth to become active participants in their futures by establishing goals and values. We want them to be well versed in family planning, sexual health, decision-making, self-esteem, and becoming leaders in their own communities.

I believe in these kids and I really believe that they will learn so much at the camp if they attend.

If you can help I would really appreciate it. I have received so much positive feedback from the US and Panama already that I really feel that we can do this!!

The donation page can be found at www.peacecorps.gov then click on donate to volunteer projects. The project is listed under Panama Peace Corps volunteer Chelsea Mackin’s name and is called “Gender and Development Youth camp.”

The following link works too: https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=13-525-015

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. The positive feedback has made me cry several times, I have been so touched by everyone that has been compelled to donate!  But lets keep it coming!!!!

Sonia Esquibel

Crazy Stubborn Peace Corps Volunteer

Panama 2011-2013

I also wanted to include photos of the potential Venue!!!

Final Project in Cocle

I have said it several times before but once again, “Lives of service depend on lives of support. Paul Farmer, director of Partners in Health coined the phrase and as I am nearing the end of my Peace Corps service, I have one last final project that I would like to share with you all. As mentioned in my previous blog, “stubborn as all hell” I wrote several months ago, I am thrilled to write that Peace Corps Panama approved this Gender and Development Youth Camp! Remember what I shared at the Peace Corps volunteers, it takes a village to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I need my village to support this incredible initiative.

The grant will help 40 under-served youth attend a phenomenal conference for 4 days. The camp will be located at Parque Omar Torrijos, a national Panamanian park and wildlife refuge. A thorough description of the camp can be found on the Peace Corps website at www.peacecorps.gov and then navigate to the “donate to volunteer project page.”

The ask: The Peace Corps was created to promote world peace and friendship. We have three goals: (1) To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women. (2) To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the people served. (3) To help promote a better understanding of other people on the part of Americans. These three goals are what my job entails in Peace Corps Panama. But for me, these goals also include capacity building. This camp provides 40 youth with leadership skills, tools, and attitudes to be active leaders in their community. They have an opportunity to meet other youth from places as far as Darien and Los Santos, Herrera and Cocle, Panama Oeste and Panama Este. This is such a rare and unique opportunity for Peace Corps volunteers to choose two youth from our communities that we want to succeed, two youth that we genuinely believe in to attend the camp. These youth will participate in lectures and activities about decision making, establishing goals, self-esteem, and improving self-image. Youth will be educated in reproductive health including STI and HIV/AIDS education. They will interact with 12 Peace Corps facilitators and work closely with one another.

Please, Please, Please help us fund this amazing project. Panama needs leadership and these youth are just the ticket!!! The project should be up on the Peace Corps website on April 1, 2013!!!!

Thanks for your un-yielding support. It takes a village to be a Peace Corps volunteer and I so grateful for my village! 

In solidarity, Sonia  

La Vaina Article, Share Success

La Vaina is PC Panama's magazine. This is an article that I submitted for the January edition.

The Article was entitled, Share Success 

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.