One of the biggest and best projects of Help El Sal2009 has been teaching English at the LDS Church Employment Center. All HELP volunteers participate in this project, which happens Monday,Wednesday,and Friday from 5-6.
Why teach English? The most important reason is that it will increase the student´s ability to get jobs in a global market where English is increasingly becoming the international language.
The HELP volunteers have varying levels of Spanish-some are completely fluent from serving missions and other community experiences, others are well-versed from classes, and some only speak common phrases or sayings.Yet all HELP volunteers are able to get involved. There are 4 different classes: kids, basic, intermediate, and advanced. HELP volunteers usually usually go where they are most comfortable speaking Spanish. In other words,a volunteer with minimal Spanish will go to the advanced class, while a volunteer who is or is close to fluency will go to Basic.
One group participant, Allen Nicholson,expressed how it is important for teachers to not continually lecture, but to instead check for understanding, have group activities and worksheets, and most importantly, let the students talk.
Overall, the LDS English project has been a success. From the friendships formed, to the teaching experience gained, and of course from the increased English speaking and listening abilities, this has been one of our best projects.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Team 2009 Has Arrived!
Team El Salvador 2009 is here!
This is us! (on our first day as a team in our very own back yard)
This is our mission:
"Through efforts of compassion and with hearts dedicated to change, we hope to provide opportunity, empowerment and an increased measure of health to Salvadorians in need. As a result of our labors we foresee both perpetual progress among Salvadorian communities and personal growth facilitated by life changing experiences.
Our HELP-ing hands diligently seek change!"
These our some of the reasons we love HELPing in El Salvador:
Some of the happy faces that greet us when we go to CIPI:
With these younger preschool age children at CIPI we took the time to refurbish the library the 2008 team built and launched a literacy program. Sadly just as that program started rolling, most of the young children (90%) were moved out to other homes or in with other families. We have since launched a program with the adolescent girls and adolescent mothers. We are doing a series of classes to promote literacy, education, self esteem and empowerment! We love the girls at CIPI and we feel like they help us while we help them.
Bright Orange means FUDEM:
FUDEM started out as a non profit organization dedicated to the development of women. However, while teaching women various skills they discovered one problem that occurred repeatedly. And that was that these women couldn't SEE! Their vision was very poor. Upon closer examination, they discovered that this was a serious problem in the country at large. Today FUDEM has three functioning clinics dedicated to giving every person in EL Salvador affordable eye care. They work with each client or family and determine what they can pay for their glasses. With these funds they go out on campaigns all over the country and visit schools and give free eye exams to children and also give them free glasses. This project is called "Ventanitas de Luz" (little windows of light). This is the first year we have worked with them and we love it already!
We cant wait to write more about the many projects we have rolling with Hospital Zacamil, Hogar Providencia (a home for boys), Habitat for Humanity, Hogar de Nino (a home for special needs children, BALSAMO (a development organization with whom we have started to build square foot gardens, teach small business skills lessons and start a small drama group in rural villages in Sonsonate), and more! We are staying busy and always looking for ways to help.
We are grateful for everyone who donted so generously so that we could be here- dontated time, money, excitement.. everything! We wouldn't be here with out you.
Check in often and see what is going on with the HELPers here in El Sal.
This is us! (on our first day as a team in our very own back yard)
This is our mission:
"Through efforts of compassion and with hearts dedicated to change, we hope to provide opportunity, empowerment and an increased measure of health to Salvadorians in need. As a result of our labors we foresee both perpetual progress among Salvadorian communities and personal growth facilitated by life changing experiences.
Our HELP-ing hands diligently seek change!"
These our some of the reasons we love HELPing in El Salvador:
Some of the happy faces that greet us when we go to CIPI:
With these younger preschool age children at CIPI we took the time to refurbish the library the 2008 team built and launched a literacy program. Sadly just as that program started rolling, most of the young children (90%) were moved out to other homes or in with other families. We have since launched a program with the adolescent girls and adolescent mothers. We are doing a series of classes to promote literacy, education, self esteem and empowerment! We love the girls at CIPI and we feel like they help us while we help them.
Bright Orange means FUDEM:
FUDEM started out as a non profit organization dedicated to the development of women. However, while teaching women various skills they discovered one problem that occurred repeatedly. And that was that these women couldn't SEE! Their vision was very poor. Upon closer examination, they discovered that this was a serious problem in the country at large. Today FUDEM has three functioning clinics dedicated to giving every person in EL Salvador affordable eye care. They work with each client or family and determine what they can pay for their glasses. With these funds they go out on campaigns all over the country and visit schools and give free eye exams to children and also give them free glasses. This project is called "Ventanitas de Luz" (little windows of light). This is the first year we have worked with them and we love it already!We cant wait to write more about the many projects we have rolling with Hospital Zacamil, Hogar Providencia (a home for boys), Habitat for Humanity, Hogar de Nino (a home for special needs children, BALSAMO (a development organization with whom we have started to build square foot gardens, teach small business skills lessons and start a small drama group in rural villages in Sonsonate), and more! We are staying busy and always looking for ways to help.
We are grateful for everyone who donted so generously so that we could be here- dontated time, money, excitement.. everything! We wouldn't be here with out you.
Check in often and see what is going on with the HELPers here in El Sal.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
CIPI Dance
I started a dance project with the girls at CIPI at the beginning of 2nd wave. It originally started with the adolescent girls without infants and the teen mothers. We started off with aerobics and basic hip-hop. Because of the difficulty of watching a baby while dancing, the mothers attended only a few classes of their own. The adolescent girls continued to want to have classes. This class was extracurricular for the girls; meaning they had to attend all of their school classes and do their homework in order to attend. These girls also wanted to perform in a competition at the end of August. We prepared a near 1 1/2minute routine filled with salsa, jazz dance and hip-hop. The girls practiced twice a week with me for an hour each time. HELP funded pink fabric so that the girls could sew matching skirts. The girls are definitely missed and I wish them the best of luck at their competition this month!
Saturday, August 16, 2008
CIPI Young Mothers
We have been doing a lot of exciting things with the young mothers at CIPI the last few weeks, and their favorite activity so far has been building their own square foot garden! To get them excited about the garden we had an activity w
here we used fruits, vegetables, and peanut butter to make fun 
snacks. On the left is Debbie with one of the young mothers and her vegetable face, and on the right, I am pulling out a very exciting item...peanut butter! They went nuts over the peanut butter. They were also super excited about the fresh food, and they would applause whenever I pulled a new fruit or vegetable out of my bag! The next week we wanted to start on the garden, but it looked like it wasn´t going to work out. However, one of our volunteers, Sam Brady, (in the picture below, explaining the gardens to the girls) worked super hard to make sure it worked out. We wanted the young mothers to feel like they owned the project, so we brought the supplies, showed them what to do, and let them do it. They were so excited, and they really worked hard! The girls dug out a spot for the garden, sifted sand, made a rock wall around the garden, put in posts, tied string to partition the garden into sections, and planted and watered the s
eeds. While we were working the girls told us that this was their favorite activity so far, and that they liked to work more than they liked to do crafts or play games. The girls are so much fun, we have loved getting to know them all!
here we used fruits, vegetables, and peanut butter to make fun 
snacks. On the left is Debbie with one of the young mothers and her vegetable face, and on the right, I am pulling out a very exciting item...peanut butter! They went nuts over the peanut butter. They were also super excited about the fresh food, and they would applause whenever I pulled a new fruit or vegetable out of my bag! The next week we wanted to start on the garden, but it looked like it wasn´t going to work out. However, one of our volunteers, Sam Brady, (in the picture below, explaining the gardens to the girls) worked super hard to make sure it worked out. We wanted the young mothers to feel like they owned the project, so we brought the supplies, showed them what to do, and let them do it. They were so excited, and they really worked hard! The girls dug out a spot for the garden, sifted sand, made a rock wall around the garden, put in posts, tied string to partition the garden into sections, and planted and watered the s
eeds. While we were working the girls told us that this was their favorite activity so far, and that they liked to work more than they liked to do crafts or play games. The girls are so much fun, we have loved getting to know them all!
Friday, August 1, 2008
CISNA Carnival
This post is long overdue, so here it is!
Our Carnival day at CISNA was our big closing activity with the 1st waivers and was led by our project lead Britney Watts. We started our big carnival with all of the CISNA boys in the auditorium room. They were lucky enough to see all the HELP volunteers (1st and 2nd wave) put on some pretty sweet presentations. Because of our lack of men in our group, the first act involved some women dressing up as men. We´ve never looked so good :) The 2nd skit involved a crazy step dance with the sounds of New York City in the background. The boys got a kick out of both performances.
We then split up the four Hogares (houses of the boys) into 2 groups. One group used team work to do a water balloon toss game and also tear apart a gigantic Batman piñata. The other group could visit up to five of the nine stations we had set up. The stations consisted of a picture behind a muscle man and elf, face painting, fishing for prizes, duck pond, fortune telling, football through a tire, and a few more. After 45 minutes, the groups switched. After a fun day of those activities, they celebrated with an overabundance amount of candy and pizza.
The boys really enjoyed working with the HELP volunteers and each other in this activity. After the carnival, HELP volunteers left them a poster with many pictures of the volunteers and the boys having a good time. The boys still enjoy looking at the poster and seeing each other´s pictures.
Our Carnival day at CISNA was our big closing activity with the 1st waivers and was led by our project lead Britney Watts. We started our big carnival with all of the CISNA boys in the auditorium room. They were lucky enough to see all the HELP volunteers (1st and 2nd wave) put on some pretty sweet presentations. Because of our lack of men in our group, the first act involved some women dressing up as men. We´ve never looked so good :) The 2nd skit involved a crazy step dance with the sounds of New York City in the background. The boys got a kick out of both performances.
We then split up the four Hogares (houses of the boys) into 2 groups. One group used team work to do a water balloon toss game and also tear apart a gigantic Batman piñata. The other group could visit up to five of the nine stations we had set up. The stations consisted of a picture behind a muscle man and elf, face painting, fishing for prizes, duck pond, fortune telling, football through a tire, and a few more. After 45 minutes, the groups switched. After a fun day of those activities, they celebrated with an overabundance amount of candy and pizza.
The boys really enjoyed working with the HELP volunteers and each other in this activity. After the carnival, HELP volunteers left them a poster with many pictures of the volunteers and the boys having a good time. The boys still enjoy looking at the poster and seeing each other´s pictures.
Monday, July 28, 2008
The BEST game graduation!
Especially for all of our 1st and 2nd wave volunteers who had to suffer through our ¨practice¨rounds of the BEST game modules, I think it is time for the world to see what a difference the BEST game is making this summer in El Salvador. Boldly going were no one has gone before, we taught not 1, not 2, not 3, but FOUR Best game business simulation modules! Yep! Creative products out of ¨raw material¨(quarter sheets of paper), supply and demand charts, marketing strategies, location location location, tourist hats, tall hats, Enrique´s wholesale and Sandra´s store to be sure. It is all now unforgetable for so many. Our students have been staff members and program managers for Microfinance Institutions or NGOs here in El Salvador, headed by ALPIMED. We´ve actually had 2 organizations ask us now how they can purchase their own set. All in all we´ve taught members of 5 organizations, with a couple more on a waiting list and some requests to take the game to the people who would benefit from it the most, the microentrepreneurs themselves. This next week we will be teaching parts of the BEST game to some united women who have started their own small business selling what we call ¨speckled eggs¨which are super small but considered a super delicous delicacy. Apparently they are also low in cholesterol. More on that next time!
Below are pictures of some of our modules, and the culmination which happened last Thursday of Module 4 and passing out our graduation certificates.
Below are pictures of some of our modules, and the culmination which happened last Thursday of Module 4 and passing out our graduation certificates.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
New Playground Equipment for CIPI
This a pic of the current slide as CIPI
As one of our bigger projects, we had the opportunity to purchase new playground equipment for the toddlers at CIPI. The old equipment has been around for years and is very damaged and unsafe. The slide has many holes, a teeter-totter that is broken, and a swing that gave out on Monday and caused a child to fall while swinging. so needless to say these kids needed new stuff. We puchased two little play sets. The kids were estatic to have the new equipment. I don´t think I have ever seen so many kids swarmed over one toy in my life. It was like Christmas for them. It made us grateful for the things we have in or lives. We hope to by the end of the summer purshase some sheet metal and weld a new slide for them, and we hope to also purchase some chains to fix their swing set.
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