Earth Day, PDM

Earth Day 2010
The celebration of 40 years of the commemoration of Earth Day was on April 22, 2010. In my site of San Isidro, I helped with an environmental awareness campaign by inviting 5 students from my health center’s youth group to attend training with 50 other high school students and youth to form an environment and global warming awareness brigade. The youth received training on the differences between organic and inorganic garbage, recycling and the topic of climate change and greenhouse gases. The next day I supervised (taking pictures) my group of youth as they went from house to house giving 5 minute education talks on the importance of separating your organic and inorganic garbage as well as on global warming. The week long campaign ended with a march that originated in the bus station and ended with a closing ceremony in the municipal city park. I have posted pictures on facebook as well as on the google “picasa web pictures” link. During this same week (April 12), the ministry of health began their annual national vaccination campaign. I helped by giving children oral doses of vitamin A (droplets) and polio vaccine as well as handing out anti-parasitic medications. Pictures of this campaign have also been posted.

I have been giving night classes at the local public high school with the latest subject on Machismo, Gender roles and domestic violence and abuse. The high school students seemed really perceptive and enjoyed these classes because I showed them a 20 minute Nicaraguan soap-opera (called Sexto Sentido or 6th sense) or dramatization video, which covered the themes of male dominance in a relationship, domestic violence, rape, unwanted teenage pregnancy and homosexuality. The video demonstrated how victims of these incidents of violence can overcome and overpower the unjust circumstances and situations these people found themselves in as well as how to combat and fight against this culture of violence.

Lastly for 4 days and 3 nights I attended a workshop at a lovely Pacific Oceanside conference and hotel called Hotel Vistamar (Oceanview). The workshop was called Project Design Management and included in the 4 days everything from the steps of “how to design a project” to community development and participative research of needs and wants in a community. About 20 volunteers attended and each was required to bring a project partner who was a native Nicaraguan. This Nicaraguan counterpart either had worked in collaboration with the volunteer before or had plans to work on a project together in the future. I also have included pictures from this workshop which was conducted by Peace Corps with the funding given by USAID.