HELP International - El Salvador

Year-end Presentation

2010-10-12T15:36:00.001-07:00

So obviously things have been quite crazy since returning Stateside after our amazing summer in El Salvador.

While much of what we accomplished hasn't been adequately addressed or reported in the blog (sorry!), we've tried to keep people in the loop as much as we can. At this point even this final 5 minute ridiculously short summary of what happened this summer doesn't do our experience justice in the least, but it will give an inspiring and fairly decent idea of what we were able to accomplish. We love El Sal and El Sal loved us!

Thanks America for putting this together!

More Business with CIPI

2010-08-16T18:30:00.000-07:00

I know what you're thinking, how much time are we spending at CIPI? Okay, so a lot alright, do you have a problem with that?

CIPI is a place with so many needs, that our volunteers have found many ways to utilize their interests and talents to give the residents at CIPI opportunities for a better future. We've painted murals, taught workshops, had mini olympics/field days, coordinated year-round volunteers, and more! Associated slightly with our weekly workshops, we had a month-long Girl's Empowerment Workshop focusing on preparing girls to become young women and professionals.

Topics covered in the workshop were understanding one's identity, goal setting, interviewing and other job skills, etc...

Rules: 1. Have Fun! 2. Participate! 3. Celebrate!

The workshop worked with a small group of girls that were consistently present in all four of the series. Juliann and Kristen were the main coordinators of these workshops. The girls loved the program and HELP sees this portion of the CIPI project as a huge success for sure.

Kristen's great example of what NOT to do in an interview.

Each of the girls received a certificate for successfully completed all four of the workshops in the series.

Included as a portion of this empowerment workshop was a two-sided "Sales" project. Once a month CIPI organizes a sale of any donated clothes that can't be used for the kids there, as well as anything that the girls have made in their sewing workshops throughout the month. The team this year decided to work on this project a little more putting together an organized receipt system for the items being sold, as well as an inventory system. The girls were trained on using these basic business tools to make a more effective and efficient running sales program. This way the girls are learning great skills for the future, are being empowered through a well running program that they can confidently manage, and at the same time CIPI is getting more money through the sales! It was a fun project and something we feel will make a huge difference at the orphanage.

Juliann found something that she...liked?

Marielos, the director of CIPI has been a great support and one of our favorite partners to work with this summer. She's been so generous in helping make our projects a priority, thereby increasing their effectiveness. We will miss her!

Hard proof of our Hard work

2010-08-10T16:35:00.000-07:00

HELP Volunteers work all day, all night, and sometimes even more! While the extreme efforts that our volunteers put forth to make real lasting and effective changes in the lives of those we serve, sometimes it's fun to prove just how hard we really work. Note all the many places we find suitable to pass-out from exhaustion.

First location, and by far the favorite... on the bus:

Next, any other means of travel by land:

When wheels aren't available, we'll take travel by water:

Not that this comes as a shock, but hammocks are also a popular spot:

In reality, volunteers can easily fall asleep during a variety of activities:

Renewing your tourist visa.

Talking on the phone.

In the middle of a meeting (tsk tsk).

Or feeding your young (okay, so this one we just wanted to put in and so we found an excuse to, sue us).

Oftentimes the bus doesn't show up soon enough, so some Country Directors, who are extra tired, might doze off before it shows up...on the side of the road while waiting for the bus...

When it comes down to it, our lovely cots seem to do the trick as well I guess...

Sometimes not even the whole cot is necessary apparently. Don't knock it until you try it.

That much more of a Habit

2010-08-10T15:40:00.000-07:00

Habitat for Humanity is such an incredible partner here in San Salvador, and has been for years now. While many might think that Habitat is in the business of building homes, that's really only a part of what they do, and in some places less of their focus than some of their other "products".

Three times a year Habitat sponsors a "Blitz Build" or what they've titled for this month; Construyendo Sobre la Fe. The first full week of August is time for national Festivales Agostinas or August Festivals. During this time (yes that's right, the entire week!) most businesses close, and everyone has vacation from work (even doctors, teachers, etc!!!). It was interesting to learn how the country dealt with fewer people at work than at any other time throughout the year.

Anyhow, this year Habitat chose the Villas de Jiboa project to be the site for the Blitz, which just so happens to be the site in San Vicente where we've been working the whole summer! Hundreds and hundreds of international and national volunteer teams are formed and team up to build as many houses as possible in a single week. Scattered throughout the week are cultural and community activities. Two of our volunteers even spent the entire week "camping" (in a volunteer house nicer than the HELP house, rough life I know) in San Vicente and worked their butts off all day every day. The rest of the team made the trip out to San Vicente on Wednesday of the holiday week to contribute in the build.

In preparation for the trip the team sat through a Habitat training. For many of the volunteers this was the first formal orientation from Habitat and they were able to learn about these other "products" that Habitat offers. We were very excited and impressed to hear the lengths Habitat goes to in providing affordable housing for Salvadoran families. Homes are available from full credit options with monthly payments, to fully subsidized projects where sweat equity is required instead of any economic contribution.

Habitat also provides home improvement/renovation projects, land loans, help on paying current land debts at a lower interest, used home contracts, as well as property deed support (helping legalize ownership over family land when no paperwork exists). These are all services that are severely needed in many developing countries.

Our contribution to the building is only a small help for the families that are already moving into completed homes in Villas de Jiboa, but helping these families is the least we can do.

This is how we improvise when so many volunteers are on one site that ladders become a commodity.

Cultural music (and dancing) was provided by the future recipients of the homes (and sponsored by Habitat of course), as well as typical food and great conversation. We're not lying when we say that HELP ended up being the life of the party, especially the kids loved having us there.

The whole team together on a single project is a rare site, and always a nice break from the norm. Locals always seem to pop into our pictures, I think they must just like us a lot.

The bibliobus has landed

2010-08-10T14:37:00.000-07:00

The National Library was a great partner that the 2009 El Sal team worked with for the first time. They worked on helping them out with a Mobile Children's Library (aka the bibliobus), with some marketing posters for increased publicity of the library, among other projects. Funding has changed dramatically, and the beloved bus (pronounced "boos") overheats too much to take it out of the city.

As this summer progressed it looked like due to the changes in the Library's support (aka removal of it) we worried that potential projects had diminished. Interest continue to increase in working in literacy projects as the second wave arrived, so we pushed to at the very least support the few local bus outings that the library is still able to sponsor a year.

Apparently some books are just not for everybody.

Volunteers were able to participate in reading stories to kids at local elementary schools and help while they watched a puppet skit about reading.

All in all, the campaigns were short and few, but very sweet.

As if art could make a difference...

2010-08-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

Wall murals have always been a way to use art to empower people. Does that sound ridiculous? Hard to believe? Check it out...

While the Hogar Murals were a great experience, they actually came along AFTER we had already started another mural project at CIPI. This project has been around for a while, even at CIPI. In 2007 the HELP team here painted some great murals in the rooms for the special needs kids.

The CIPI director Marielos Bonilla, was excited from the beginning of the summer for us to help out with more a more encouraging environment for the kids here. CIPI is a place for many kids from pretty heartbreaking backgrounds, all victims of some form of abuse, and when victims are brought to a place that resembles a prison, get thrown into a uniform, and have little to no personal attention, it becomes really easy to begin to feel like you're being punished for what other people have done to you. The purpose of the wall murals this year was to demonstrate the huge capacity and potential that these kids have.

We chose a giant wall in the girls comedor or dining hall. Marielos expected (pardon my paraphrasing) to see after a few weeks of work some images of fruit and vegetables, with maybe some cake and pizza sprawled across this huge surface. What she didn't expect was what we came up with.

Meet Jeanette Langston:

Residents work-of-arter and mastermind behind the CIPI Paint projects. Jeanette took the time to interview all the girls, and create a collage of ideas of what the girls envisioned as their desired careers and lives. Topics ranged from nursing, teaching, art, acting, dancing, motherhood, etc...

The girls took a liking to the design before it was even on the wall.

As the girls helped create this masterpiece, they felt empowered to be part of something bigger than themselves, and to be helping create something that would last forever to help future generations of girls at CIPI struggling with the same types of trials that they have suffered through.

STUMBLING BLOCK! The paint that was already on the wall wasn't happy with what we were putting over it, so it all had to come off, that was lots of fun.

Jeanette and other team members spent hours with the select girls that were responsible enough to help with the wall. This group of girls was really special and exemplar for the rest of the kids at CIPI, as well as for us.

It wasn't long before the wall was scraped, sealed, and primed and the painting could begin.

The mural took a little longer than we had anticipated, but looked incredible. As soon as it was finished Marielos organized an inauguration for the wall. The director of ISNA was invited as well as many others in charge of other homes around the city. It was a great day, and a huge boost for the HELP team to see a project reach completion.

It was great to see the ownership the girls took in the mural, and they all saw themselves as one of the successful women depicted there as well.

Homie feel to the Hogar

2010-08-10T13:10:00.001-07:00

HELP El Salvador has been working with the Hogar de Patre Vito Guarato, aka Hogar del Niño for several years now. Volunteers have come to love the residents at the this home for individuals with special needs ranging from severe to levy, and physical to mental.

HELP volunteers spend time with the residents, help develop motor skills, play with them, and work with their communication books. Books developed by previous HELP volunteers filled with pictures and simple phrases that allow those without speaking ability (the vast majority) to communicate through pointing at the pictures. This way people can have full conversations with them about their birthday, their favorite anything, etc...

A few years ago a HELP El Sal volunteer took it upon herself to increase the program by creating a year-round volunteer couple that will live in the orphanage and work with the residents there. The couple is rotated every three months, but basically all year there are HELP volunteers working there.

During the summer though, the HELP volunteer couple in the orphanage has the great luck to have our annual HELP team in San Salvador as well to support their projects. Each couple works to implement some form of sustainable project before they leave. This year Mark and Shanna Warr are the volunteers at the Hogar and implemented a mural project, with the intention to increase visual stimulation for the more severely handicapped residents, who due to lack of adequate staffing to work with them, are locked into their beds early on in the afternoon and also left late into the morning there as well. The increased visual stimulation aims to decrease self injury, tantrums, and outbursts from these individuals who are left in their rooms with nothing to do or to look at.

HELP El Salvador supported with part of our fiscal budget to buy paint, as well as in manpower helping to put up these wonderful murals.

Some of these pictures are thanks to one of our favorite residents, Giovanni, who got ahold of my camera and figured out how to take pictures, he had a good time with that, and thought he was pretty funny.

Shanna Warr did all the work of putting the murals together...

...and we helped with the painting.

In just the short amount of time that we've been working on these murals (14 in total!) there has already been a huge decrease in tantrums, self injury, and other problems associated with the large amount of time the residents at the Hogar are in their rooms unsupervised.

For more information about the Hogar, check out their website, or the HELP Volunteer Couple blogsite.

4th of July El Sal style

2010-07-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

Ok So we realize that this is quite late in coming seeing how it is now August but we still have so many different posts that we want to make and we are going to start with our 4th of July Bash El Sal Style.

So Heidi´s birthday is on July 5th and her favorite holiday is July 4th. She likes it even more than Christmas, sick, I know! (Just Kidding Heidi!) She decided that if we were going to celebrate the holiday we had to do it right. So we started searching for places where we could buy a ton of fireworks. We hit the jackpot and we may or may not have gone a little crazy. We refuse to tell how much money that we spent though!

Here is Heidi with some of the goods. She was like a kid in a candy story...or a Heidi at a fireworks stand.

Here are the ladies that owned the little firework story. So I´m pretty sure that we made their whole month! They were ecstatic when we asked for more and more fireworks. I think we probably helped them meet their sales quota for that month in just a half hour of shopping. They were so excited they bought us candies and sodas.

Ok these two photos probably need a little explination. You´ve heard of roman candles right? Ok but you may not have heard of a roman candle war. This is apparently a tradition in Tyler´s family. A terrifying but hillarious tradition. So this above, is the warning found on a roman candle and this below is what Tyler looks like when he gets one in his hand...hence the terrifying nature of the whole thing.

To have this roman candle war we decided it would be better to get away from the city (and just any people in general; mostly for their own protection). We headed to the beach Costa Del Sol where Heidi found us a great little hostal that was pretty close to the beach. The ironic thing is that it was surround be a small little fishing village. When the sun went down the poor villagers had no idea what was coming. We started the firecrackers and then the roman candle war. WE talked to a couple of them in the morning and they laughed when we told them that it was us and that we were celebrating our Independence Day. They seemed to understand because they then told us stories of the crazy things they do with firecrackers during Christmas and New Year´s.

Andy testing out the roman candles.

Jeanette was quite a devious roman candle warrior.

This was Heidi´s favorite purchase...well worth it!

As shown.

Andy and Kristy sharing a sparkler.

McCall, Kassandra, Esther, and Jessica jumping with their sparklers

More sparkler fun.

Tyler setting off some smaller fireworks.

Dusty and Esther

Jaclyn showing how it is done with the roman candles

Learn us some ingles pues!

2010-07-13T12:18:00.000-07:00

So I know you all want to know the amazing things we´re doing teaching English to our Salvadoran friendlies, but first things first, some brief updates for those interested in our other awesome projects:

We finished a portion of the CIPI Paint project, inaugurating our first finished mural there in the girls comedor, it is amazing, expect a blog about that soon...with pictures of course.

CIPI Workshops are moving along. One of our most recent successes was a successful union of the Universidad Centro Americana social hours program, integrating students from the university into our workshops. This will provide a framework for volunteers at CIPI year-round working from what we´ve set as a foundation regardless if we´re there or not.

BALSAMO Square-foot Gardens are moving really well. Lots of families have shown interest, taken initiative to put together their gardens without us there, and share experience and know-how. Some have even started planting!

Tomorrow will be our Health Fair in San Lucas. Teaching over 500 kiddos about proper hygiene, dental care, nutrition, and more...

Hospital Work is also a blast. We are getting close to having real mock-ups for the new signage at Hospital Bloom, and continued our relationship with Hospital Zacamil where we are able to interact directly with surgery patients and critical patients. Intense, but great experiences.

Alright, so there´s much more of course, on to the good shtuff:

Our English classes rock, thanks to project lead America Nelson (no bias here, I love you). Seriously, awesome classes. This week our advanced students will have to step it up as they will take on teaching the two basic classes and the intermediate class on their own with volunteers there. The whole team will be involved in the BALSAMO Health Fair, so we will all be out of town until late tomorrow night, leaving the classes up to our fully capable advanced students.

Juliann has been preparing them for this, and the goal is that they will be taking on our classes indefinitely when we leave.

Advanced students have already had practice teaching the lower classes earlier this year. This happened to occur during our Board site visit with Mindy, check out her blog to read more about her experiences with the English classes or anything else with us here.

Our intermediate class loves Jessica and McCall, who now team teach it, but they can´t help but miss Kenna, our rockin´ intermediate teacher from the first wave. Kenna´s the only volunteer all summer that has gone home so far, she´ll be joined by several in about a week. Sad.

In other English news, this year HELP El Sal formed a new partnership with Universidad Modular Abierto, one of the bajillion schools in San Sal. There many students are actually studying English full time, though they often lack the one-on-one time with native speakers that they really need to improve their language ability and really utilize it to improve their chances at a better job in this country. It´s been a great experience for everyone involved, and is held weekly.

Talk English be good.

Habitat para la Humanity

2010-07-02T14:27:00.000-07:00

Our Habitat project this year is some good times and then some. We´ve had a great time working with the community building homes. As we´ve stated before, the Habitat project this year is in a place called San Vicente, a community that was destroyed last year by the tropical storm Ida has had a rougher year than normal. Complete livelihoods have been washed away by major mudslides and hundreds of families are homeless.

The project in San Vicente is to build homes for those affected by storm Ida, and the wonderful thing about it is that the entire community falls under Habitat for Humanities rare fully-subsidized programs. Most families who receive homes must pay a monthly payment until they´ve covered a certain portion or all of the cost of the home, but these community members are required only to invest "sweat equity," or labor and manpower to help with the build. In this way we are able to work directly with the families who will be living in the homes!

One awesome thing we were able to do this past week was tour the Santa Ana build site that the 2009 HELP International team worked on. The site is practically finished, and there are families and gardens already occupying the spaces that our dedicated volunteers spent hours and days working on last year.

We´ve come to learn that Habitat for Humanity is starting to steer away from their previous "One House, One Family" model, and has begun community projects. We couldn´t have been happier when we met with our local contacts at the beginning of the summer to hear this. Most Habitat projects not only work to achieve an entire community of homes in a central area, but also include community centers, daycare facilities, and other community oriented build projects to improve the quality of life of those who will be moving in.

Here´s the already functional children´s community center/day care for the Santa Ana project from 2009. It truly is inspiring to see such beautiful and wonderful facilities that HELP volunteers were a large part of.

Brian Lunt, 2010 Habitat Project lead and Gail Chadwin, National Volunteer Coordinator

We look forward to seeing this year´s project progress and begin to bless the lives of salvadoran families in a permanent way.

In other Habitat for Humanity news, Tyler Nelson (me...one of the Country Directors) and Brian Lunt (the Habitat project lead) have been working with Gail on coordinating a First Aid/Basic EMT training for Habitat masons and volunteer coordinators. We look forward to reporting on a succesful workshop in the next few weeks.

CIPI 101

2010-06-30T17:39:00.000-07:00

CIPI stands for Centro Inmediato de Proteccion Infantil, or Immediate Child Protection Center. It´s basically the first stop for any child that enters the "system." The bulk of our orphanage work this summer is being done here. On any given day there are around 170 kids here, supposedly only for a space of 30 days before having to be placed in a more permanent facility or returned to their families. Kids come here for many reasons, and the majority of them are abuse victims.

There are around 55 adolescent girls, some pregnant, some with newborn babies, many pulled out of street gangs or from hospitals. There´s a group of about 25 young boys from 8-10 years old, all abuse victims, and as a group all were dropped in CIPI´s lap about two years ago, and CIPI has nothing for them to do, they can´t go to school, and there aren´t resources to teach them there, so the bulk of CIPI´s energy goes into finding stuff for these boys to do.

There is also a group of around 20-22 special needs kids, these ones get the majority of the local volunteers´time so we haven´t worked with this group a ton. The number of infants ranges from day to day as they are easier to place in homes/centers (usually under 30 days old, some with birth defects). It´s definitely an overwhelming place to walk into, but the director, Marielos, is amazing, and the few staff there really like HELP and what HELP´s done in the past.

We love working with CIPI, and have developed some great projects here. We run a weekly workshop with them. Twice a week, three hours a day, two adolescent girl groups and the boys group are rotated through three activities.

Esther has been heading up a physical activity hour, usually dancing which the girls love. The boys usually play tag or find fun physical games to play to keep them active (futbol is always an easy default, no kidding...).

Christina and Jeanette have been also having an art hour, where the kids are learning to sketch and draw, and find creative ways to express themselves.

The third workshop includes some life skills and psychology subjects, but oftentimes volunteers have found better luck just spending time with the kids, reading to them, and finding ways to make them feel important even for just a short period of time.

The CIPI project when it comes down to it really is several projects. These workshops only account for a small part of what we hope to accomplish here. Kristen Widdison, a micro-finance intern, is working on a business skills workshop project to teach the adolescent girls occupational skills to improve their chances of a more successful life than they´ve led up til now once they leave CIPI. Jeanette Langston, another volunteer, has been getting the paint project moving along quite a bit in the past week or two, which aims to improve the look of the facilities so the kids here are less likely to see this place as a punishment for being a victim of abuse, something that more often than not happens. Though they weren´t the ones who did something wrong, they feel like they are being punished, rightly so as much of the place here looks similar to a prison. HELP volunteers in the past have done murals here, and according to CIPI staff, it has done wonders for those that come through here.

One of our volunteers, McCall, isw heading up our volunteer network project, where we take advantage of the university requirement nationwide for all students to serve a certain amount of horas sociales, or social service hours. Psycology students, nusrsing students, education majors, etc... can all be recruited from right here in San Salvador to spend time working on the projects and workshops that we´ve been implementing this summer so that there is a constant, year-round source of volunteers for this very wonderful, but needy institution, and most of all for these kids.

Wave 2 Initiation Station

2010-06-22T17:33:00.001-07:00

Our second wave is fully here, including Andy, Mary and Dusty who arrived a week or so after the main group. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for them they missed out on the main initiation, so we´ll find some way to welcome them formally to this wonderful country. The rest, however, were put to the test the first Friday they were here, and I guess you can say they passed with flying undergarments!

The Challenge:

Brave the central market

Though these pictures don´t do it justice, this place is huge and full of nooks and crannies of the most oddball random items imagineable.

Our second wavers were given the assignment to find the most random item in the following three categories:

Child´s toy/play thing
Item of jewelry
Undergarment (mind you this was presented as anything worn under clothes, including socks, so we don´t feel in any way responsible for the hilarious outcome...ok maybe a little...)

The following Sunday during our weekly planning meeting the treasures were unveiled and winners were chosen, here´s how it played out...

In the Jewelry Category, the winner was...

...Jaclyn with...those things...

For a Child´s Toy the winner was...

...Heidi! This creepy rolly polly clown thing scared the crap out of all of us...

And the Undergarment award went to...

...Erica for her "hoohaw frame" as Jay Porter coined it, lack of material and the fact that it was covered in dirt helped her win this category.

Jessica DeCosta was our overall winner, chosen for her thrifty shopping (she spent all of $1.34 for all three items, quite impressive), the hideous piñata she bought that would only terrify children (it´s better we don´t have a picture I promise), and for being the only one who found an undergarment for men, granted it probably would only be worn on special occasions (again, it´s best that we don´t post pictures...).

Everyone was a great sport, we had a lot of fun, and they all did great braving the crazy market and bargaining with local vendors. Don´t you wish you had come here now!

All about BALSAMO

2010-06-21T09:22:00.000-07:00

So technically we call this project the "BALSAMO" project, but in reality our real partners are the community members in a small county called San Lucas. We are working with four small family group communities (caserios) in this county, which is located in the municipality Cuisnahuat, which is in the Sonsonate department (our equivalent of a state). BALSAMO itself is a micro-credit and agricultural organization working in rural communities here, who we´ve worked with for several years now, mostly utilizing their know-how, their transportation, and their contacts in the community.

We began the summer with some basic needs assessment strategies. Initally we met with BALSAMO to discuss the potential projects they saw a need for in the communities they work with. Our history with BALSAMO mainly consists of square-foot garening projects, so we went into the meeting with this in mind.

Early meeting with BALSAMO staff Rosi, Carlos & Alvaro

Not long after working with and getting to know the BALSAMO staff we were able to go out to the community we decided to work with (San Lucas) and meet a few times with the community leaders to discuss the needs of the general population there.

Meeting Center in caserio Los Conces

Waiting for our first meeting with community leaders

We were able to decide on a few needs to address this year: the high rate of undernutrition for the children of the communities and a limited access to health care facilities.

The back of the truck, often how we get around, even in the rain

To build trust and foster a good partner relationship with the community members we started off our projects with a celebration, inviting all community members to come get to know us, have some delicious arroz con leche, dance, and laugh at us.

Kassandra Bellingham, one of the project leads, dancing with a community member

Our skit about a jealous husband during the inaugral celebration

We´ve began our large-scale intervention for undernutrition through a coordinated family garden project. The goal is to implement square-foot gardens in the home with trainings on well-balanced meals, incorporating fruits and vegetables, and cooking methods in cases where this hasn´t been a usual thing. Most families we visited average one meal a week that has any vegetables, and one meal a month including meat (almost always chicken). A regular day will usually consist of beans and tortillas for all three meals, with rice at lunchtime.

The current status of the project is looking very promising. We´ve surveyed a large percentage of the population and now have a running list of the types of fruits and vegetables they commonly grow and eat there, as well as their understanding of a balanced diet, a healthy lifestyle, and clean water. With this information we plan to organize all the foods that they have and customizing a food pyramid to fit their resources, that way they can learn to vary the foods that they eat, and incorporate the fruits and vegetables that have been lacking, by growing them in their own yard. With river rocks, local soil, sand, and dried plant products, community members are being taught to create a small family garden in a way that can produce great quantities of healthy food year-round.

The past two weeks we spent working in the four caserios doing garden demonstrations. They were great successes, and many community members are interested in having their own family gardens.

The Montes home, where our first garden demonstration was held

Bringing up river rocks for the box around the garden

Building the box

Teaching the right mixture of soil, sand, and plant products

The next phase of the project now begins, visiting the homes of interested community members, building or helping build the gardens on a large scale, and teaching the nutrition basics for an improved nutritional status of the family.

We also are now starting the work on the health access portion of the needs we assessed. Interventions for this problem include disease prevention workshops, a health fair at the local school, and a small pharmacy provided for the community. Stay posted for updates on this amazing project!

Nacho Libre, Jauyua, and adventures in the back of the truck

2010-06-14T14:34:00.000-07:00

Ok so this is going to be a random blog post but we thought it was time to throw some more pictures up here of our fun adventures. Don´t worry we are also working very hard! We just also know how to play hard.

This is us first wave girls with the cheetah from the World Cup advertisments in South Africa. The World Cup began this last week and it is SUCH a BIG DEAL here. Every person we sit next to on the bus or every taxi driver has their own opinion about who is going to win and who has the better team. It is always fun to ask them who their favorites are and to have them explain why. In our English Conversation Club on Friday morning the theme was the World Cup. We talked all about the differences between Latin America´s view towards it and the USA´s. They all think that we are so strange for not knowing a lot aobut it or evening really caring about soccer.

One Saturday night we treated ourselves to Benihana´s and a movie at one of the malls here in San Sal. The malls here are actually quite incredible. We were pretty impressed with the chef, especially Brian.

In El Sal we travel by every mean possible, but one of our favorite ways is in the back of a truck...especially when it is pouring down rain. This picture doesn´t really do it justice but all of us were crammed in the back of a friend´s pick up and we were getting drenched. It was awesome!!

Here´s me (Juliann) and Esther traveling back from English class in the back of a truck.

And here´s America, Christina, and Esther again.

Here we are again in a much bigger truck traveling with our partner organization Balsamo to the rural communities we are working with.

Once again it totally poured down rain on us. You don´t have a lot of options when you are in the back of a truck in the rain, so you just hope that your big black trash bag will be enough.

Here we are in all of our trash bag glory. They actually did the trick and kept our clothes nice and dry...just not our heads or arms or legs. ha ha This is Kassandra, Kenna, and Esther. Kassandra already had a rain jacket so she decided to use her trash bag as a skirt thingee. She was drier than all of us. Peter, Juliann, Tyler and America

The weekend that Tropical Storm Agatha decided to roar into town we decided to go out and explore La Ruta de Las Flores. This is a historic route that goes through several colonial cities. They all are supposed to have fun little markets, cool central plazas, and food festivals on the weekends. We rented a micro van and all went along for the ride. But of course because of the rain almost everything was shut down. We were a little bummed but still had a great time. We accidentally sat in on a catholic wedding at one of the cathedrals. Jauyua is the biggest city on la Ruta de las Flores and it has some really fun stuff to do there. They have a Festival de Gastronomia (I know that sounds gross but it actually just means a big food festival) there and we could pick between tons of different delicious options.

One of the options was frog...which of course Tyler ordered. He said it tasted like...frog.

The thing that made all the rain and the traveling worthwhile was that we finally found the movie Nacho Libre. Kenna and several of the other volunteers had been wanting to watch it ever ince they visited a Catholic Seminary for boys that looked exactly like the little orphange in the movie...big ugly school bus and chunky little kid included. We had made it a "SMART" goal to find it at one of the many piraterias here and watch it. We had asked at every one of them and never had any sucess but finally in Jauyua, Peter found it for us and we all freaked out! It was great.

Some of us also went dancing and we had a blast. Esther, who is studying dance education at BYU taught us all how to move our hips. What a good-looking group!

A much needed update...

2010-05-27T15:20:00.000-07:00

It has been a month since Juliann, America and I showed up in San Salvador, and it has just completely flown by. Our first wave has been here for a good three weeks and the second wave team will be arriving in a few short weeks themselves! They have their work cut out for them too, the first wavers have been great as we´ve been putting things in motion and coordinating various projects for them to be working on. We´ve been running on empty for weeks now and have lots to show for it, hence this blog being extremely late in the making!

We´re pleased to present our wonderful home, where our volunteers have packed themselves in, can´t wait to cram 10 more!

We´ve had a great time getting to know the city. On one Saturday a few weeks ago some of us took it upon ourselves to explore the city center, check out the main cathedral, center markets, and the like. San Salvador is awesome!

The courageous country directors sporting "Che Guevara" hats, as if we have a right to.

Weather has been interesting, while it´s supposed to be the rainy season, the first week to two weeks of everyone being here was uncharacteristically dry, and quite hot. The first bout of rain that the volunteers saw was an exciting event.

Now it seems we can´t get it to stop, it´s been downpouring on us all week, and all day, which is also uncharacteristic. We´re waiting for the normal torrential downpour in the afternoons surrounded by beautiful clear skies in the mornings and evenings, so far no luck.

Project-wise things are so busy we couldn´t be happier. We started right off with the local partnership of Habitat for Humanity, and found ourselves digging trenches and preparing lots for foundations. The project has been lots of fun, Brian Lunt is our project lead for Habitat and has kept us busy at least once a week working to rebuild homes for families displaced by Storm Ida last year.

Habitat has requested that we provide an EMT training for their volunteer coordinators and head masons for the entire country, we´re excited to add an educational supplement to this project this year, something that will be very sustainable and will be a great asset for them to have.

We also were able to get things right underway with FUDEM. We really can´t say enough good things about them. We took all the volunteers their second full day in country to the main FUDEM clinic in Col. Flor Blanca where we were all trained on taking visual accuity for the outreach campaigns we´ve been doing with them.

It wasn´t long before we were off on rural and urban campaigns providing subsidized eyeglasses and referral services for those without other resources to proper visual healthcare.

With FUDEM we have in the works an addition to their program, in preparation for their new Ventanitas de Luz program targetting needy school children throughout the country, we´ll be helping them develop training materials on eyeglass care, proper use, and signs for teachers and parents on potential visual health problems in their students and children.

The LDS Church Employment Center has partnered with us again on our annual English Classes geared towards increasing employment qualifications through improved language ability. In the first two days of sign-up we had over 130 students wanting to join our classes, it was a madhouse.

With so much demand we were unable to even accept everyone that wanted to take the class, which is a first in the history of the class. The first day volunteers interviewed all applicants indivdually to do the "pruebas de nivelacion" or placement testing.

We now have functional weekly basic, basic advanced, intermediate, and advanced classes with the goal of some of the advanced students teaching further basic classes throughout the remainder of the year while HELP volunteers are not in country.

BALSAMO is one of our other main projects that is moving along really well now. We are working with them in a small group of caserios, or family groups, in Canton San Lucas. We´ve met a couple times with community leaders there and have been coordinating with BALSAMO who has been working in community agricultural projects there for years.

This was our first meeting with the BALSAMO technicians working in Canton San Lucas, it was on May 10th, which is Mother´s Day in El Salvador. So while we got a lot of work done, and some good plans made, it wasn´t long before Brian and I found ourselves karaokeing Hey Jude at their party in the back room and dancing with all the employees.

They have a nice way of convincing you to do something you might not want to.

This is the community center where many of the community leaders meet for various reasons. Our first meeting had only four community leaders there, but the second trip out earlier this week was full of leaders, both men and women, ready to work with us on some great projects. We are hoping to implement a community garden project which will include a nutrition component, analyzing the fruits and vegetables native to their community, and developing a customized food guide for them to use along with training workshops to know how to best utilize their food to provide a balanced and fully nutritious diet for their families. Canton San Lucas has some of the worst rates for child undernutrition in the country right now.

Last week McCall and Peter arrived, finishing out first wavers. They´ve already been down in the dirt with us at Habitat and helped work on many of these awesome projects.

Orphanage work at CIPI (Centro Inmediato de Proteccion Infantil), Health Information Systems and proper signage/health education literature at Hospital Bloom, among other projects are also beginning to come together, which we´re very excited about. Expect more information on those soon! And for more continuous updates, so you´re not stuck reading our novel chapters everytime we´re able to update the blog!

El Salvador rocks!

At the Muelle!

2010-05-07T11:23:00.000-07:00

El Salvador HELP Volunteers are the cream of the crop, not that this was ever in question, but just in case, here´s some proof of this fact!

As part of their welcome to El Salvador we decided to take them on a surprise excursion just over 12 hours after arriving.

Wednesday, 8:00 pm; Volunteers arrive at the airport.

Thursday, 7:30 am; Volunteers board a bus to an undisclosed location.

Alex will have to get used to just being too long for EVERYTHING!

11:00; Volunteer arrive at La Libertad, a scorching coastal town of El Salvador, treated to some delicious Michoacanas (Mexican fresh fruit popsicles).

The ever responsible and trustworthy country directors at work.

11:30; Volunteers are presented the Mercado de Pescado on the Muelle, the local fish markey located on the pier, really cool place!

THE CHALLENGE:
This is where the fun starts! The volunteers were challenged to find the most disgusting or crazy thing they could in the market, barter a price, and deal with the stench of their purchase all the way back to the house. Their buys were then voted on at a team meeting that night for the best purchase. It was a great icebreaker into the culture, and a lot of fun, and at time downright nasty!

After that was when we decided it was time for lunch, so with stench-filled havoc in hand we bee-lined up to one of the local Pupuserias for some delicious pupusas.

We got to enjoy the black sands of La Libertad, practice skipping rocks, and getting clothes wet in a climate quite insuitable for drying, and having a good time together.

What a good looking bunch if you ask me, I am a little unnerved at how much I sound like a biased father-figure though...

THE RESULTS:
So by that night there were some interesting smells from the garage, as our winnings had been stewing in San Salvador´s heat (only slightly more bearable than the exhausting heat of La Libertad). While everyone´s "catch" was equally fun and entertaining, here are our runners-up and winner of the competition.

In third place, and actually quite impressive:

Kassandras Tiburon (shark) head, that´s right, just the head.

The vendors on the pier were a little confused as to why she wanted the head, especially since she had it dug out of a bucket full of guts and putrid remains NOT meant for selling.

Our second runner-up, and a surprise to the end, Bryan´s fish head.

Though a shark sounds cooler than a fish, I think Bryan´s beat out Kassandra´s because of house disgusting it looked, and because he pulled it out of the bag it came in, leaving a nice spot of blood on the garage floor.

And the winner is...

Esther´s ... ... ... thing she bought...

So after close inspection, it seems to be some sort of fish, flayed down the middle and split open and flattened, with nice additions to make it look like a little devil face. Shock factor and surprise definitely got her the win. She now gets to pick our first vacation spot, nice work Esther! And to all the other volunteers who whether they wanted to or not, found something wonderfully awful and carried it home from the pier.

And We´re Off!

2010-05-07T10:58:00.000-07:00

First things first, El Salvador is amazingly awesome and we love it here. Business-wise the work is really starting to come together and I think we´ll have maybe even more on our plate than we can handle! Volunteers arrived (dispersed over a 48-hour period of time) between Tuesday and late last night (Thursday). We´ve become well known at the international terminal to say the least.

Oh Alex...

After many long hours of travel it was great to have them out our home for the first time.

Now they they´re all here we can´t wait to get things moving with the partners we´ve been able to meet with so far, and are also excited to continue meeting with new project possibilities.

FUDEM:
All the volunteers are being trained this afternoon on visual accuity, hopefully early next week we will begin working in rural communities across the entire country providing low cost glasses to children who don´t have them. The FUDEM clinics are phenomenal and their program is impressive and at times overwhelming, they are truly an inspiration to development workers anywhere, CHECK. THEM. OUT!

LDS ENGLISH:
Carlos Hernandez, the director of El Salvador´s LDS Church Employment Center has been great help in organizing our annual collaborative English Classes with them. The Francisco Gavidia University across the street from the center has volunteered three classrooms to house our basic, intermediate, and advanced classes. Volunteers are eager to start classes, which will begin this coming Monday. Plans are also in the works to coordinate a way to expand the classes year round utilizting the acquired expertise of the advanced students as future teachers.

BALSAMO:
Balsamo is another incredible Salvadoran NGO that works in rural and urban communities in all aspects of development, self-reliance, and empowerment. We will be taking all of our in-country volunteers to meet with them again tomorrow morning to begin our plans of a new pilot program in which we focus on one community, "attacking" it from all angles to provide as many sustainable solutions as possible. This model will be replicated in future communities, adjusted as needed.

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY:
Put on your globes and flex those muscles, Habitat is hard work! Volunteers will begin working Tuesday morning on a project that El Salvador´s Habitat Chapter is giving us for our baby. This year´s project is a community in San Vicente, building 50 houses for families displaced by last year´s extreme flooding. HELP volunteers will be involved in much of the planning and family selection this year.

OTHER PROJECTS:
Projects involving orphanage work, the national library, a prosthetics program that will be central to our work this year no doubt, and others are still in the coordinating phase, and will be unveiled as they come together more. I promise they´ll be worth the wait!

See the following post for our volunteer´s initiation to the country, its something you won´t want to miss!

Este Es El Chiste

2010-05-03T21:17:00.001-07:00

Juliann and I are noticing a funny trend and are assuming it might just continue. We're basically as good as a married couple. We just got a house together and have spent the past few days cleaning it together and putting together what random furniture we can find.

We also realized that we have a joint bank account, make important decisions together, budget together, etc... America is the mistress, I guess, in this situation.

Things are pulling together, and we can´t wait for our volunteers to show up in not too long!

First dinner at Estella´s, delicious Pupusas, the first of many I´m sure!

So it says "VIENVIdos" which should be "Bienvenidos" meaning welcome and the. The jist is: "Welcome to El Salvador, Fer and Adriana and Grandma are waiting for you."

Fernanda, or Fer, is one of Estella´s granddaughters, and she´s been waiting since August for the return of the HELP Volunteers, for any 2009 volunteers that come across this blog, they still remember your names, and miss you very much. For the 2010 guys, this is your new family, get ready!

The Eagle Has Landed

2010-04-28T13:11:00.000-07:00

"El Salvador always waits for you with open arms."

El Salvador is hot! In a good way of course.

We (Juliann, Tyler, America) got here late last night, and have been enjoying the wonderful hospitality of the awesome people that love HELP International. Estella Salguero, a close friend of Emily Foster, one of last year's Country Directors, was gracious enough to agree to cook for us again this year as she did last year. She also offered up her house for the few days as we look for a suitable place for the rest of the group.

At this point we have several leads on housing, and plan to spend most of the day tomorrow (Thursday) hopefully solidifying somewhere to live, if not we're confident that in the next few days we'll be moving into our new home. Until then, Estella has been taking great care of us.

This morning we were able to meet with Sabrina and Jose Carlos at FUDEM, an amazing organization down here that works really hard to provide dental and vision services at affordable rates. Optometrists, Opthamologists, Dentists, and more spend time away from their own places of employment to provide top-notch service for the entire country. Jose Carlos is head of the Outreach Programs, which we'll be helping with a lot this summer. We'll be taking all of our volunteers to a training with them next week (fresh off the boat aye!) to learn how to test for visual acuity.

We've set up preliminary meetings with LDS English, Habitat for Humanity, BALSAMO, among others, and are waiting on some call backs. We're so excited for this amazing summer that we know we've gotten ourselves into.

Volunteers: Get ready for a blast, seriously. We'll see you soon, and get ready to get to work, 'cause we'll have stuff ready to kick your butts! Also, of course, in a good way.

Moving Right Along...

2010-04-06T19:07:00.000-07:00

This year's team is getting ready for an awesome year. Many of our volunteers have raised more than half of their program fees already and the word is out that El Salvador is going to kick butt, and if the word isn't really out, well then it is now.

Since our Pupusa Party we've gotten together for a Culture Night, which was intended for the group to spend some time discussing the current situation in El Salvador, as well as standard things like recent history, safety, climate, travel, and everything in between. We also had the chance for all but a couple of our volunteers to be in the same room together, which was an awesome experience.

We love our group already, and have begun trying to best get everyone together. As a help we've put together a YouTube Channel and encourage our team to post regularly videos that we can connect to. We'd love all of you to introduce yourselves to each other, and I guess the YouTube world. Some have already done this. Check out our Channel!

As one of the Country Directors I can't express how excited I am, nor can I relate how awesome our volunteers are this year. I'm expecting to be overly impressed and have no expectations for this year's programs because I know any expectations I could have would be surpassed by this great group.

Quick updates:

We've secured Estella, the wonderful woman who cooked dinner for last year's group, so we will definitely not starve, quite the contrary I'd imagine!

Tyler & Juliann (the country directors) met with the president of FUDEM this week. FUDEM is one of our partners in El Salvador, and we're excited to work with them again this year. They have a really amazing Eye Clinic Outreach program (Ventanitas de Luz) that we will be able to be a huge support to.

We've begun collaboration as well with 2ft Prosthetics, and plan to implement a project providing an inexpensive option for under-the-knee prosthesis for Salvadoran amputees. The network of partners in El Salvador grows everyday, we're excited about the huge prospects of this project.

Projects are definitely not limited to just these, and our volunteers have already impressed us with their motivation to get to work even before traveling to El Salvador, our team members will step foot in country in only three weeks!

We put the EL in El Salvador

2010-03-01T20:39:00.000-08:00

It's 2010's turn! Work has started on another great year of development work and social entrepreneurism in El Salvador.

Recruiting and fundraising have begun to make this year the best so far. Meet this year's Country Directors:

Tyler Nelson & Juliann Keller, both BYU students with experience abroad in Latin America. Tyler is a Public Health major and International Development minor, Juliann will graduate in April in English with a Spanish minor. We're both excited to get projects in the works, and to hit the ground running in El Salvador when we arrive April 27th, not two months from now!

The 2010 team is full of great volunteers. We had our first meeting as a group on Friday, February 26th at Tyler and America's place. Tyler's wife America will also be spending the summer volunteering in El Salvador. She'll be a BYU graduate as well with a Linguistics degree and minor in TESOL Certification, a great asset to the team. All of our volunteers bring their own expertise and experience to the group. Friday's activity was a great success, not to mention delicious!

It was great to get as many as could come together to start getting to know each other and to begin discussions on development work, as well as specific projects of interest in El Salvador for this summer. The pupusas were a hit!

Thanks El Salvador Restaurant for the delicious typical cuisine.

We look forward to more activities, more volunteers, and more fun as we prepare for the best El Salvador program to date!

LDS English

2009-08-11T07:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Team 2009 Has Arrived!

2009-06-09T12:49:00.000-07:00

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.

CIPI Dance

2008-08-20T12:38:00.000-07:00

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!

CIPI Young Mothers

2008-08-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

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 where 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 seeds. 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!

CISNA Carnival

2008-08-01T14:40:00.000-07:00

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.

The BEST game graduation!

2008-07-28T17:09:00.000-07:00

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.

New Playground Equipment for CIPI

2008-07-15T18:14:00.000-07:00

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.

American Idol!

2008-07-15T17:48:00.000-07:00

We were very privilaged to join Padre Vito as they battled it out to gain the title of Padre Vito Superstar. The participatants were all excited to be a part of the night and we were all impressed by their talent. Mike, Rachel and I (Sarah ) all dressed up as the judges. We couldn´t help but give everyone tens (except for Mike was playing Simon so he had to be a little harsh). Each contestant wore the special sunglasses and sang their hearts out. They all wanted to do a second round they loved it so much. We as volunteers were also given a shot...let´s just say that we didn´t do too hot. But the kids who judged us were very gracios. They gave Rachel a 10 and me a 9. And they loved Mike. In the end we decided everyone was a winner..because in reality all of these kids are. They are so special and just want to be loved. And that´s something priceless that we can give them.

VILLAGE BANK!!

2008-07-04T17:54:00.000-07:00

We were so excited to spend Tuesday with the Microfinance organization named ASEI. One of their smaller offices was in Cojutepeque and we were able to travel with Licenciada Rodriguez to visit the village bank in a village there.
ASEI started working with community banks in 1993 and mainly services women. The number of people in a village bank lies between 6-35. This office services 250 village banks, they have only 7 promoters in that reigon and they have only one office to service these 1450 clients! Talk about busy busy!
The specific village bank we observed consisted of 18 women (that´s a LOT of people!) and they were all from the same village. Their loan amount was over $3,000 and they seemed so united and happy. Their village bank has been together for over 4 years and they were there for their second payment over the 4 month loan period.
We were able to visit these small businesses that varied from tortilla making, to small tiendas to a bakery. It was wonderful to hear their stories and share this experience and excitement with them. It was such a learning experience for all of us, truly it was a joy.

2008-06-19T19:30:00.001-07:00

Habitat for Humanity
Every thursday we go to Santa Ana and help the organization Habitat for Humanity build houses for people that couldn´t otherwise afford it. This is a great oppritunity to get to know the families that live in the houses and it feels good to be able to see the difference that you are making.
Last Saturday they gave away 6 houses that to families and it was neat to see the house that we had been working on ( in the picture above) with an actual family living in it!!

Darby Davies

Princes and Princess Day!

2008-06-17T17:41:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we had a lot of fun teaching the boys and girls at CIPI all about princes and princesses. Cody asked the boys, ¨What do princes do?¨and they all shouted ¨kill the dragon!¨. He also taught that princes share with others and save the beautiful girls from danger. The girls were given crowns and fancy gloves and rings and were taught how to act like a princess. Then they recieved their glamor shots. The boy also recieved superhero toys and colored pictures of their favorite superhero. Here are some pics of our fun filled day!

Photos and Fun!

2008-06-12T10:55:00.000-07:00

Here are some long awaited pics from projects we have been talking about and working with.

Here we have Whitney reading to some boys at CISNA. These boys love reading and being read to! They sometimes you have like 6 or 7 of them all wanting to see the pictures over your shoulder as you try to read books to them. WHAT A JOY!Below we have Darby teaching and leading the Beginners English class at the LDS Employment Services office. We teach there three afternoons a week and it is so fun to teach people English! We are all really close to the students now and will miss them when we leave. They are always concerned when one teacher is missing and are truly a blessing to work with.

This picture below is for all of the Padre Vito fans out there! Here is Leighann posing with Geovani from the orphanage Padre Vito Guarato. Here´s an comment Christine made about working with Geovani :

" My favorite moment was when a small group of three of us were working under the pavilion and Geovani came "running" toward us on his walker. His legs were pumping as fast as he could…like 30 steps for every foot! He was SO excited to come join us. He was shaking with excitement, had a huge smile on his face, and made sounds of utter glee coming toward us. Finally when he sat down with us, he carefully and patiently took out his box of dominos. I don't think I'll ever forget seeing the smile of delight spread across his face as he looked at his precious box of dominos…..they obviously light up his life. He kept smiling the whole time he played with us. Quite a joy to work with Geovani. Not only is he handsome, and not only does he wear a shirt and tie without fail everyday, but he shares his special spirit with us and it is something marvelous to think about—how he lives with so much grace even with his limitations---and how that is a valiant example to us all. "

Last but definitely NOT least, is a picture of our project lead for CIPI, Ashley Watts. She has been working with CIPI as project lead during the whole wave, and has been doing an amazing job with the help of the other volunteers. Recent projects have included making name tags with each child individually being able to decorate it. The niñeras (nannies) love the work HELP is doing for these sweet toddlers. They are absolutely adorable, and we also feel blessed to serve and love these children every week.

Zacamil

2008-06-11T18:08:00.001-07:00

Today Mike, Blanca, Angela and Leighanne went to the Zacamil, the hospital where we will be volunteering for an orientation with one of the assistant director of nursing. We were given a tour of the hospital and introduced to several of the nursing supervisors for the different floors. They are were very gracious and said they were excited to have the help. The usual nurse to patient ratio is 1 nurse to 15-20 patients if the patients are somewhat stable. If they patients are intensive care, the ratio is one to four. Some of the nurses explained that they usually work 14 hour shifts and if the oncoming nurse doesn´t show up, they have to work for twenty four hours. We will be starting actual volunteer work next week. We hammered out the details of what we would be able to do as volunteers. They said they would appreciate help with bathing patients, changing positions, cleaning, working with the occupational therapists and other therapy units such as child therapy.

June 9, 2008

2008-06-10T17:10:00.000-07:00

In the morning we headed to CIPI. The volunteers split into two groups: one group working with the toddlers and the other working with the infants and mothers. The preschooler group had a successful day playing with sidewalk chalk, playing games, coloring and reading books.

One group stayed at CIPI during the afternoon and did glamour shots with all the girls and their babies. We hope to print the pictures and make frames for the girls to keep.
The other group headed to CISNA where we did activities with Hogar 2. We are getting the kids excited for our big fiesta-carnival this Friday. Stay tuned!

Next, we headed to LDS English. The teachers are all loving the opportunity to speak their own language! But don´t worry we love Spanish!

Posted by=Whitney Smith

Padre Vito

2008-06-10T16:58:00.000-07:00

6-10-08
today was amazing just like every other day. we were lucky enough to have all the volunteers come with us. each volunteer splits off into groups with two or three people and worked with them from playing dominoes, to making bracelets, to talking with them or dancing, etc.
a brief description of padre vito:
it was started by padre vito, a man who wanted to give handicapped children a second chance. there is currently over 150 adults and children with disabilities, ranging from new borns to middle adulthood. we are so blessed that we have this wonderful oppurtunity to work with these individuals, and we learn so much from their special spirits.
-love whitney hansen

2008-06-03T17:33:00.000-07:00

June 2, 2008

Today we went to CIPI in the morning we worked with the toddlers and the nursery children. We taught the toddlers about the animals. They love when we come! Right when we walk in, they all jump on us and are so excited that we are there! They all have such sweet spirits and different personalitys, it is really fun to get to know these children. Today there was a new boy that arrived and it just broke my heart because he cried almost the whole time, screeming, “mama mama” Who knows when the next time he will see her. These kids just need love and it is so awesome to be there for them and give them the love they have always dreamed of!

Today we made mask with the boys. They loved it! We each gave them a paper plate and paint and they created these sweet masks. We thought that paint would get all over the place but it ended up staying under control which was wonderful! These boys have a lot of personality and are so so fun to work with!! It is always such an adventure coming here!

LDS ENGLISH rocks! From 5:00-6:00 every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we teach English! It is so much fun! The people are so excited to learn English! You always have to be at the top of your game because you never know what kind of question they are going to ask you! It is a really good review for my owwwn Enlish  J/k

Aventuras in El Salvador!

2008-05-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

HOLA to all! This is Blanca G. Rodriguez, one of the Country Directors for the HELP International El Salvador group of volunteers. We have had the first wave of volunteers for almost 3 weeks! Can you believe it!!!!

Did y’all know that El Salvador is the only country in the world named after the Savior? It’s an amazing thing to see the Savior’s name everywhere. I wonder, though, how many people realize that the Lord’s name is being used everywhere and also that they themselves are named Salvadoreños or “People of The Savior”.

We have started a variety of projects, but I just wanted to touch on two of those. We will be having other volunteers and CD´s update more information about activites cooresponding to the variety of projects.

We have been able to work with CISNA and CIPI, organizations under the government organization ISNA that takes care of orphaned, abused, or delinquent children. There are four homes at CISNA that include the ages of 7-10 years old, 11-14 years old, 15-18 years old and a home for new boys in the complex. It’s actually really funny because the first home with the youngest children will see us walking into the complex and they’ll start chanting: “gringas, Gringas, GRINGAS! GRINGAS!” Meaning “white girls!” – it made me laugh SO hard the first time as we were walking in because when they start yelling in unison all of the complex knows we’re here and everyone comes out to say hello…what an entrance…I feel like a Salvadoran movie star! Jaja! No, just kidding. But we will be starting to teach the oldest boys at CISNA there business principles by teaching the BEST game. This is a game or business simulation that helps present certain basic business principles such as accounting, competition, supply/demand in a market economy…things like that. It’s really fun and will be useful for these older boys since they are in workshops or talleres that teach them how to use industrial sewing machines, to bake bread in the panaderias, and teach them to tailor. This allows them to leave the complex with skills that they can immediately use to make money instead of resorting to delinquency or gang activity to survive from day to day. This will be such a fun experience.

With CIPI, we work with young mothers and girls who have been abused in different ways and have been pulled out of their homes and placed in CIPI until they can safely be returned to their homes or placed in an alternative home. These include girls that have been involved with prostitution. The second wing at CIPI we work with is the preschoolers. These are either children that have been abused or children of the girls in the complex who have been removed from the homes as well. Lastly, we have a group of infants that we work with and play with. These include babies that have been abandoned at hospitals and left unclaimed. Also, these include the babies of girls in the complex. This is the toughest wing to work in because you see babies with hydrocephaly or other illnesses that are only a couple of weeks old that have been completely abandoned. There are even perfectly healthy babies that are just left at hospitals. I appreciate the efforts of the government to establish such a place for these children and young girls. We are working hard to help raise the self esteem of the girls, and give attention and love to the little ones.

So, in conclusion, I thought it would be a good idea to include a couple of do’s and don’ts of being in a Latin American country:

DO remember to wear spandex or shorts under your skirts, because sometimes the Salvadoran buses come whizzing by and cause you to have a certain Marolyn Manroe moment in front of a lot of people.

DON’T play soccer barefoot, because you never know when you’ll have to kick the ball off of a wall of bricks and miss the ball and end up kicking a brick wall instead…owie!

DON’T eat questionable meat – Montezuma’s revenge is not pretty.

This is us eating at Fashion Rabbi´s house - her and her husband are from the U.S. Thank heaven for those that can barbeque for us!This is us at a Mother´s Day ward activity. We sang some primary hymns, and the rest of the ward presented breakdancing and latin dancing...we felt really cool.

Blanca & Christine say HOLA!!!

2008-01-24T19:07:00.000-08:00

Hey guys! We are your El Salvador Country Directors! We are totally excited to get to work with our volunteers! We will write more personal info soon, so you'll get to know us better!

2008!

2008-01-11T15:42:00.000-08:00

OK, I just wanted to post and let anyone who is still checking this site know that we have our new Country Directors for 2008. They are Christine Weiss and Blanca Rodriguez!

Time is running out!

2007-08-11T08:49:00.000-07:00

The work is going forward in a big way down here. Unfortunately, time is running out so fast and we only have so many hands. I can't believe how quickly our time here has gone. We've picked up some new projects with our partner organizations; fixing a kitchen roof at the Emiliani boys' school, furnishing some books and wheelchairs for the hospital, establishing mentoring for the kids at CIPI and preparing a zoo day for the preschoolers. Hopefully we haven't bit off more than we can chew in the remaining work days. It is great to see the focus and social entrepreneurship of the group's members, they've really stepped up to the plate.

Singing time For CIPI

2007-08-02T19:23:00.000-07:00

For the last two weeks the HELP Volunteers have been focusing on painting a mural on the wall of the Special Ed room and one in the Pre-school room at CIPI. Every other day I have been going to help paint. This is the experence Deborah, one of our volunteers had during this last week.

We first did the mural in the Pre-school room and then moved on to the special Ed room. In the special ed room we weren’t able to move the kids out as we painted. So we were there painting as Trisha, one of our volunteers who specializes in special ed and works at CIPI with the special needs children regularly, was doing activities with them. About two days ago I had a wonderful experience with the children. (Actually I have been having special experiences with them regularly but this is the one I thought I would share this week.) Trisha had planned a singing time and needed our help to include all of the kids.
I have not had very much experience with children who have disabilities as sever as these children and I have had a bit of hesitation in the past during the few times I have interacted with such individuals. Working at CIPI with the children in the special needs room has helped me understand so much more about how things really are and how truly choice these children are. As it was time for singing time to begin we started to pick up all the children and lay them in a circle on mattresses on the floor or in our laps. We sang all of the children songs we could think of to these kids and helped them move along to the tunes. Every now and then we would switch the kids in our lap to give the ones on mattresses a chance to be held. It was so much fun to see their huge grins as they listened to us sing and struggle to harmonize. The last song we sang was a song I learned as a child in church. I never really understood the true meaning of it until I was cradling a four year old boy who can’t walk or communicate very well with the world around him.

Trisha was the only other person in the group who knew the song so she and I sang it as a closing song to quiet things down. The words go like this:

If you don’t walk as most people do
Some people walk away from you
But I won’t, I won’t.

If you don’t talk as most people do
Some people laugh and talk at you
But I wont, I wont.

I’ll walk with you
I’ll talk with you
That’s how I’ll show my love for you.

At that moment, as I sang those words to this precious little boy, it really sank in deep how much it actually meant to him and the other children that I was there just then doing what I was doing and how important it is to show love to those who are not as physically or mentally alert as others. I am so grateful for the smiles and the laughs from these kids that build me up daily and remind me why I am here doing what I am doing.

Teaching Opportunities

2007-07-23T17:21:00.000-07:00

Every day we have many diverse teaching opportunities. Each is unique and brings its own unique challenges and approaches. Fortunately, we´re a unique bunch of people. In Suchitoto a few weeks ago we had the opportunity to see schoolkids we had taught about the wise use of remittances teach their community through dramas, murals and to some extent, dance.

Hollan and Blanca taught community leaders in Cuidad Delgado about health and sanitation. Those leaders will in turn teach their communities about preventing dengue, parasites, and promoting general well-being.

Laurel (left) and Maclaine teach English to schoolkids in Habitat Confien. These kids are really committed. They come to a two hour class after (or before) their normal school day is done.

Gregan (above), Cody and Fred taught the ¨Best Game¨to promoters as ASEI. The object of the game is to learn good business principles that they will pass on to the some odd 6000 small businesses that they mentor.

Trust us, we´re professionals

2007-07-05T16:40:00.000-07:00

It has been a very full week for us here in El Sal. Between two birthdays, an Indepence Day celebration, the culmination of our work in Suchitoto and our other myriad projects we are always on the go. Volunteers have weathered civil unrest, working in hospital wings where patients sometimes need help with bodily functions, changing many dirty diapers (sometimes of physically- and mentally-handicapped kids who are not at all small), making brochures which cover everything from parasites to sex ed, and various minor infections (sometimes the sinus sometimes the knees you never know). And they´ve done it magnificently. The following pictures do not all come from the past week but they´re pictures you might not have seen so check them out.
Children at CIPI look on as their nursery is fumigated. Not very uncommon. Mike strums some tunes for the special needs preschoolers while Tricia holds down the fort. The kids really love all kinds of stimulation and with a shortage of staff they get very little of it so this was a welcome treat. Rachel´s birthday at Multiplaza. The French cafe was very nice; the desserts were as the French say delicious (okay, that´s not really French).

Painting the pool at CISNA. Fortunately we got this done before it exploded.

Now the fourth of July was quite a blast. We apparently weren´t cool enough for the American Embassy to invite us to their little shindig so we made our own..with fireworks that you Utahns (you law-abiding Utahns) can´t get your hands on. Fred, bless his foolish, foolish heart, lit off one of said fireworks at ground level where it ought not to be. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt. The neighborhood security patrol joined temporarily in our American reverie. Go America´s birthday. Now we look forward to Blanca´s birthday tomorrow.

Habitat para la Humanidad: June 21, 2007

2007-06-30T09:52:00.000-07:00

Those of us 2nd wavers who went to Habitat for Humanity for the second time here are beginning to learn to bring several thousand milliliters of water and eat a hearty breakfast or we would desmayarnos despues de poco tiempo.

Gregan, Cody, Mike, Danyelle, Fred, and Hollan spent a good portion of the day mixing 25 buckets sand (tierra blanca) with one bucket cement which we’d spread across the dirt floor.

We spend the rest of the time temping, or pounding, the ground.

Soon after Hollan and Danyelle left to help out at the Hospital, we were joined by another volunteer group from Ohio– Hope Lutheran Church – an hour before lunchtime. We helped train them on our mixing and temping routine before we went in search of food. To our dismay, the elderly lady who sold us our lunch last week didn’t have anything for us so we continued down the road and was invited in to eat outside a lady’s house after we asked if she was selling any food. We didn’t see any signs or see anything to make us believe she was selling food, but we were more than happy to sit down and be served by this kind lady and her 3 daughters and a son. The son politely noted how Fred was more “chele” than Gregan, Cody, and I. The daughters watched us eat from a corner and giggled as we ate our meat and rice and listened to the reggaeton they had playing on their radio. Satisfied, we returned to our mixing and pounding labors. We took a break to enjoy some guanaba fruit.

The house is coming along very nicely. We are excited to see the progress that will be made next week!

Rosales Hospital

2007-06-30T09:32:00.000-07:00

Rosales is one of the oldest operating and largest State run hospitals in all of central America. A couple of the volunteers have started going to the hospital to help out on Mondays and Fridays and this is Hollan`s experience he had on Friday.
We walked past the guard at the entrance of the hospital and made our way to the head nurses station. Rachel, Danyelle, Fred and I made our way to the head nurses station. Because Danyelle and I don`t speak much spanish we have been paired with spanish speakers so that communication can be maintained between us and the hospital staff. We waited patiently as our contact came out to meet us. We were escorted to first the womens wing were Rachel and Danyelle would be for the day and then Fred and I were taken to the Mens wing. As we entered the building we were introduced to the head nurse of the mens wing and she started showing us around. I immediately noticed how privacy is not a word in the vocabulary of hospitals here. One large room housed 22 patients and most of the time the beds touched each other making Nosocomial diseases a guarantee. (Nosocomial diseases are diseases or sicknesses you get while staying in the hospital for something else), Breakfast hadn`t arrived yet so Allie (the head nurse told us to just go get to know the patients) so Fred and I did, we went around the entire room and simply asked what was wrong with them and if they were in pain or if the food was good here and of these 22 patients here is what we were dealing with: Our first patient had just had a major abdominal operation and was lying comatose on his bed. Bed 2 stared at the lights all day and said nothing, and we were later informed that he had just had brain surgery and a full recovery was doubtful. The next couple of guys, (giovanni, manuel, carlos, carlos) had broken bones from falling out of trees, shattered legs from a mudslide, Head wounds from car accidents, and Carlos had two gun shot wounds one entering and exiting his right hand and one entering and exiting his abdomen. The final two men of the first row had bed sores, weakness, aches, pain, fever and were probably sharing their sicknesses. On the other side of the room was the worst of all, Rena, had been shot five times from a gang related shoot out and had both of his lungs punctured, which required large tubes (a little smaller than PVC piping to be inserted in either side of his abdomen for drainage of the blood that would fill his lungs, he was in so much pain and at one point in the day he asked Fred and I to help him sit up alittle but after discovering that his entire back and bed was soaked in blood we decided the bed was more than likely acting as a bandage and decided him sitting up would make him bleed out and die within minutes, so we layed him back down. Next was Christian who we wheeled to the abscess department so his calf abscess could be debreeded, I can`t exactly explain what that was like because I lack the medical terminology knowledge but open wounds and a lot of bleeding comes to mind. Upon leaving we also saw a body being taken to the morgue. Of the other patients present in our wing we had hernias, a heart attack patient, a broken femur than necesitated a weight system of 18 pounds to pull the bones apart for proper placement, spinal problems, catheters, colon bags, Tumors, Throat surgeries and much more. Nurses continually changed bandages and open wounds were exposed which made for excellent viewing and incredibly shadowing experience, Also Fred and I did our best to become friends with the nurses and by the end of the day we could look at everyones x-rays with a problem and we even go invited to one of the nurses birthday party. I can`t wait for Monday and I hope those guys in the hospital are surving.

2007-06-25T19:53:00.000-07:00

The girls in the back of the pick-up truck in Suchitoto! Note the matching shirts!
The Habitat for Humanity Home we have been working on for several weeks.
Danyelle and Blanca climbing up to the falls at Juayua.
The group up at Juayua.
Through it all, we still have fun! The girls going dancing with some of our local friends.

2007-06-25T13:45:00.000-07:00

This is just one of the many toe surgeries that we (medical students) have been able to perform on each other. What great experience!
Practicing for the ALPIMED skit the day before we performed it in Suchitoto. ALPIMED is a project where we have gone around to several different schools in Suchitoto performing our skit, which is designed to help the children understand that it is best to save their remitences rather than spending them.
POLICIA!!! (Part of the ALPIMED skit)
Es mas peligroso! (another scene from the skit where the main character is trying to get into the U.S. using a Coyote).

Renta! Your rent is due!

2007-06-20T17:35:00.000-07:00

Our diversity here is amazing. We have a diverse group of volunteers, Tricia is doing wonders with the handicapped children at CIPI and Padre Vito, Gregan, Mike, and Cody were asked to write a book with Ricardo (the director of ASEI, and microfinancing) which will deal with various models and programs of microbusiness. Hollan, Danyelle and Blanca are moving forward with volunteering at the hospital and are trying to organize nights shifts and surgery observations. Jackie can´t get enough of the CISNA boys and she always has her English lessons so prepared. Kirtley is versatile and works well with all, and laurel is experienced in several areas and is great. All volunteers are willing to help each other out and bring laughter into any situation. Service is not only helping others better themselves but also the giver receives so much learning and experience that I often feel that service helps the giver more. This is a great place, with great people and life couldn´t be better.

2007-06-18T17:22:00.000-07:00

Well everyone, the first wave has gone home and the second is now getting comfortable so we´ve finally decided that the time has come to get our blog up and running. Here´s what we´ve been up to... In partnership with Habitat for Humanity we´re working on two homes in Zaragoza outside of San Salvador. We´ve put a lot of sweat into these houses, a lot of sweat.

We´re also working at CISNA, a center for street boys. We teach, read to, play with, and otherwise occupy them during the day. This is so crucial because without a place to be and something to do these kids remain on the street and eventually can become targets for local gangs.

But we´re not through yet (even if the pictures temporarily are). We have groups working with orphans and preschoolers with disabilites and working with at-risk children from infants to teenagers. We have groups volunteering at a local hospital and teaching about dengue prevention. We are teaching local school kids about the wise use of remittances (money sent by family members in the USA to El Salvador which make up a large part of the local GDP). We also teach English three times a week.

So as you can see, we are all very busy, very sweaty, and very happy. Look forward to more pictures in the future and ask about in-home toe surgery for your loved ones.