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.
