Year-end Presentation

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

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!

As if art could make a difference...

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.

Learn us some ingles pues!

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.

CIPI 101

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.