Day 28 - The End of the Begining

Bags are left unattended on the parking lot, food is left unattended on the tables, friendships are suspended in time, unfinished, just started.

This morning, 9 am, still confused by the remains of a few hours of sleep, I see the first participant leave. Paola. The rush of bags, relatives, cars, friends, tears. And then it hits you in the face: the experience is over.

After five weeks of collaboration and the creation of a safe space, every single one of our 41 change makers will return to their respective reality. Will they resist the social pressure?  I ask myself the question as a facilitator explains how hard it will be to share their experience and the change they have been through.

This day feels surreal. We all now it has come to an end, it is in the air, but the same rituals take place. Struggle for waking up, rushed breakfast, struggle to gather the students together. I suspect they are trying to slow time down, trying to avoid the inevitable separation. Without each other’s physical support, determination will be challenged.

As we sit down in our last family session, our “Chilaquiles” seem to dread the reflection that is expected from the them. It will probably take them several weeks if not months to digest the amount of information that was given to them in these four weeks. Each of them was touched by something different and they will take this individual experience with them. Saul was inspired by his community service as much as Adriana found her direction during her Social Issue Activity.

An adequate reflexion of the courses content: a source of information and inspiration for further development. Thinking about the future, I can’t help but wonder how we will be able to reduce this experience to three weeks when they agreed they all would have needed more time. Time to prepare themselves for the transition, the resistance and the indifference.

Every issue seems so trivial in these last hours. Distance between facilitator-participant, authority, punctuality.

I remember the collage made by a group of my Visual Arts students: “It’s funny cause we’re all the same”. We are from the same generation, a youth full of hope and will to transform our realities, bring them just a bit closer to this vision we created. As we sit in the last plenary session, it seems to me that these 41 participants are one step ahead of us. As a facilitator, I chose to support Patricio Provencio’s initiative and contribute to it with my input. It is his vision we all worked towards and, with this vision in mind, we gave all we could. Thinking of the open day and the presentation of the social projects, I find myself confronted with the conclusion that for the time being I do not have the strength to initiate such a project in my own community. We all have a lot to learn form these 41 young adults who decided to act upon their society, despite of the fear. I know the memory of the nervous and excited faces will accompany me once I decide to engage on this same path.

Today is a sunny day. Sititng in a living room in Mexico City, I am ready to start the next part of my journey. Destination: Oaxaca, Chiapas. Ready to discover this country that 41 teenagers are so eager to change for the better. In this same morning sun, I know a majority of our participants are sitting in a classroom, reintegrating the immutable routine of schooldays. Hope that the changed they have gone through will be contagious. Hope that it will spread like a disease and become a pandemic. As the mother of a friend said on the way back to Mexico City, maybe only two of them will carry their project through, but for each awareness risen, our common vision is expanding. I have faith that none of the 41 participants will forget the lessons learnt during these four weeks and even when projects encounter too much resistance, I believe our lives have now taken a certain direction and no one could put us off this track.

I think time has now come to close this chapter. The task of writing the last blog entry was my burden. I could have used more time to draw reflections our of this condensed experience, but I realize that I would never get to the bottom of my emotions. I didn’t mention the tears, the cries, and embraces exchanged. I didn’t talk about the promises that were made. These emotions were theirs, ours and so should it remain.

A mountain of challenges is awaiting each and everyone of us, the road ahead will be filled with obstacles. Skepticism, conservatism, pessimism, close-mindedness, racism, discrimination. But we have faith, we do not stand alone.

Catherine Ador - Norway/ Switzerland (AC '09-'11)

Day 27 - Hope for the Future

Though tempered with the sadness, it’s a great joy to see this program achieve its conclusion. It’s been only a month, and a quick one at that, but I don’t think I overstate myself in saying this project has been an incredible sequence of events, and for me, personally, quite an emotional experience. Through this program, I’ve seen a lot of Mexico. I’ve witnessed this country’s horrifying diversity, extreme wealth, crushing poverty, radiant joy, desperation, and as I said in my first entry, these, this country’s many faces, compile the paradox that makes it so beautiful. As I also said in my first entry, this perfect paradox is brilliantly characterized by the complexity of the people, and as such the participants I’ve had the privilege to work with haven’t yet ceased to impress me, with their passion, young wisdom and hope. They’re very obviously teenagers, I should admit, and their natural spirit of rebellion can be at times tough to teach at, especially when it’s ten in the morning and the class is absolutely unresponsive because they didn’t sleep at all the night before. But I’ve seen in them such bold brave souls that I can’t help be let my teacher’s frustration resolve into admiration, particularly this week as they took the spirit of the course into their own hands with their work on their own social develop projects, the final step of Integrando a Mexico’s mission to allow the complex brilliance of this country to become its own savior.

This week, we led the participants through the process of creating a project for social change, and the curriculum, quick but concise, proved quite effective. Participants were divided into groups and led through brainstorming sessions meant to draw out their interests and potential project ideas; they were then individually supported in the creation of a vision statement outlining their goal for the future of their community, a list of long term objectives, a list of short term actions leading up to each individual objective and a mission statement that suggests in a few words how these objectives’ respective actions leads toward the vision. Participants were also taught how to organize a team, fundraising techniques and other relevant management techniques like strategies for risk assessment and project sustainability. The week concluded this Saturday with an open day where participants were able to present to an audience of friends and family summaries of the workshops they’d participated in, and in conclusion, their project plans.

 As a conclusion to our project, I found the open day a truly satisfying success. The participants shared their nearly finalized project plans and most if not all were thoroughly impressive not only for their thoroughness but for their strength in passion and rigor. Some  participants intend to fight for solidarity and national identity with work in elementary and secondary schools, where workshops everything from anti-bullying to artistic expression are intended to act as tools for the development of self-awareness, individual identity, creativity and constructive interaction with the community. Others want to focus on marginalized communities, such as indigenous groups or immigrants, and will strive to spread their stories amidst the centralized Mexican community with the hopes of generating empathy and acceptance. Others intend attack social issues that augment such socio-cultural conflicts by focusing on a community in their home state and attacking issues like poverty and illiteracy directly.

I was particularly excited by two projects from the latter group planned by participants I had in both my poverty workshop and project development workshop were. One will begin with workshops teaching literacy skills to both build trust between community and project facilitators, and prepare their project participants for later workshops which will provide further academic support for the children of these families and resource management training for the adults. The other, more specifically, will attempt to act as an advocate for microfinance in its respective community, to bring both resources and a sense of empowerment to local famlilies living below the poverty line. The project hopes to raise awareness within the local banking community, perhaps even creating a link with the microfinance bank Fundación Realidad which in partnership with the international microfinance web acting through the website www.kiva.org, relays funds from donors around the world to communities like those in Guerrero, where with project will take place.  It will also attempt to culture skills necessary to apply these micro-loans for progress and sustainability, and possibly, as a final goal, encourage the sustainable living technique of the permaculture movement as such application.

Projects like these were particularly inspirational for me, as a facilitator, because in addition to watching these young people, in their projects, embrace, with such intention, real hope, I was also able to watch these individuals, as my students and friends, apply the ideas we’d discussed for the last four weeks, turning theory into reality. With the two mentioned projects, I watched participants take ideas from the consumerism awareness activities and discussions from workshop sessions on poverty in Mexico, and apply them to their strategies for change, planning to teach literacy as a strategy against Oscar Lewis’ ‘Culture of Poverty’ and the application of Muhammad Yunus’ microfinance (covered in the poverty workshop) and permaculture as a dual strategy to bring funds into a community made capable for change and simultaneously leading this community away from the culture of consumerism so often exhibited by the economic class they will hopefully enter. Seeing this as a facilitator was an incredible experience, as I can think to myself, somewhat egotistically, that I contributed to the formation of this powerful plan for action. But beyond this selfish satisfaction, these projects leave me in awe and admiration, for in addition to mastering the concepts covered in our workshops, these participants have plans to actually apply these ideas, something I, personally, can only hope to do in the future. These participants embody a spirit of both hope and action, which, as this project ends, gives me great hope for the work that is to come.

This, of course, is one of the most important parts of our project: success of Integrando a México will not, of course, be measured simply by the size of the dreams presented at our open day. Rather, the defining characteristic will be the number of projects that are actually attempted. Many projects seem much too good to be true, so it’s easy to be skeptical of some of the plans, with school starting this week and the all too discouraging resistance to change yet to be tested. But I choose to believe our participants will at least try.  As I’ve written for the past four weeks, I’ve met beautiful people in my time in Mexico, and if there’s one thing we’ve achieved in this small community of social entrepreneurs, it’s a sense of hope for their hope. As I’ve said before, these young people understand the painful paradox that is this country, they’ve experienced it first hand, and yet they’ve somehow maintained a belief in a better future matched with the willfulness to carry it through. With this as their grounding, I believe that they like our project’s leader Patricio Provencio, can match passion with reality and strive for real hope in their future.

With this as encouragement, I watched the first of the participants depart for home with a sense of satisfaction and pride. I don’t mean to take credit for the participants’ initiative, nor for their spirit, we had an incredible group, and much of our work merely helped them on their way. But to see them leave so hopeful and simply excited, I can’t help but think this project achieved at least the beginnings of its goals. We wanted to culture a mindset of openness, hope and readiness for action all necessary for a successful social entrepreneur, and these participants embody this mindset. Even if some of their projects fail, the raw energy that drives their present will for action doesn’t seem likely to die out, and until they finally realize the beginnings of the change they want to see, I have faith this energy will continue to motivate them. If this is true, we’ve achieved all we could have hoped for, and in this way, I think my fellow facilitators would agree, we have reason to feel content.

Day 26 - ¡Vamos Cambia!

An empty camera battery, a full photo card, a drained mental energy supply and a full day of practice later, our last day at the school facilities and the third to last day with the participants is drawing to a close.

It’s been a full day dedicated to the event’s of tomorrow: the open day for the public of San Miguel and UWC, and more importantly for the family and friends of the participants. I believe it will be an important day, if not the most important day of the course, as it ties everything we have been doing together, in a way that must be presentable to people that live outside of our little bubble. Because just as Atlantic College, life has felt like a bubble. We have been in three places, mainly: at the facilities, in our house in San Miguel, or at the range with the participants. Luckily we were able to escape for nightly strolls and adventures after all the work was finished once in a while. Go for a coffee, ice scream or some salsa dancing and karaoke in town. If we were willing to sacrifice sleep. But a very important difference for me was that I learned huge amounts about the country I am in, we focussed on what we can do out there and many of the participants will actually go and do it. Create that social change.

I am having very mixed feelings about the end of this project. Again saying goodbye to some of my close friends and people I have spend so many hours with, learned from, stimulated me, and have brought tears to my eyes. I cannot look back on life the past five weeks without a heart filled with gratitude. However, I am also more thrilled than ever for live to go on and move to my next phase in life: university. As I was reflecting during one of our family meetings (both participant and facilitator reflect during these half an hour meetings to discuss the course of the day), I realized that I had been putting off being in the community I am from, with a fear of loosing who I have become the past two years at Atlantic College. The participants will have a challenge too when arriving back home - their mindsets have changed unlike to those of the people around them. To truly put your passion and connection with those in need of improvement into action in an environment that might not support that action is a huge challenge, but I have a lot of faith in them, as long as they really want it. For me, the course has made me less scared to act, act with a critical and reflective mind. Of course I still have to proof this to myself but I am looking forward to it with an open mind. Tomorrow will be an opportunity for the participants to demonstrate their changes and make people understand them, before returning to their home lives. As one of the participants told me, she hoped for her parents to come as they seemed to have lost faith in the existence of people who help others unselfishly. She hopes to bring back this belief to her parents. She definitely brought me this belief.

A lot of powerpoint presentations were prepared, many speeches practiced and a lot of songs sang. With the participants we are performing a poem, that consists of many haikus (a japanese poetic structure of a line with 5 syllables, a middle line of 7 syllables and a line with 5 syllables.) Every language has two of these dedicated to them, and together they form a long poem, with the team of Hope and Passion in our country. Having a lack of access to the entire poem, I will just post the two haikus written in Dutch:

Het scheelt ons wel wat

er gebeurd, medeleven

vind je nu en dan

de capaciteit

het is er, het kan, er is

passie maar passief

(if you’re really curious google translate at your service)

Another participant performs two of her personally written poems, visualized with simple, but very powerful body language. There are some songs, some skits, some wonderful contributions.

There is one song that has stuck in my head since the participants performed it during the auditions, with cool guitars with 8 strings from the area of Veracruz. It’s stuck in my head during the many crazy photos that we took. (During the facilitator photo there were about 30 of the participants with each a camera swarming around us - we felt like celebrities. Undeserved attention). It’s been playing in my head while we went to grab a coffee on the way back. It’s been there while I wrote this blog. And it will be there when I start packing as soon as I have updated my last blog entry. It’s a catchy song, called Bamba (you will recognize it as soon as you hear it). But it’s mainly stuck in my head due to one of the phrases, as they adapted the lyrics to the project.

¡Vamos Cambia! (¡unidos!)

Laura Brouwer - Netherlands (AC '09-'11)

Day 25- Just be 'stupid'

At the end of the third day of the Social Project Development Workshops, most participants have already had the working plans, mission statements, and even presentations about their projects ready. But I can hardly give myself any credit, for I could not help them much beyond giving them a few comments. In fact, in the past three days, I had been feeling a bit awkward—“hypocritical”, even, because none of us had actually done a social project. We are guiding the participants to do something that we only know theoretically.

But I continue to be amazed in conversations with participants about their projects: school permaculture greenhouse, community alphabetization programmes, cultural workshops, micro-finance-related project… There are more than a few big dreams, and the visions of the Mexico and their communities are beautifully exciting.  Every day, in every conversation and every “family” meeting about the projects, I asked them whether they honestly think that they can realize them; some gave me possible difficulties, but the “yes” was invariably the unanimous answer. They seemed to have no doubt at all.

However encouraging this is, to be honest, we must acknowledge the high possibility or (or even, the fact that) at least one among the 40 projects planned would not work out. It scares me: would this enthusiastic, idealistic participant lose faith and become cynical to all ¡IaM! talks about if he fail?

It has been said by some successful people that the most important thing that they had done was to be “stupid enough to think that they could succeed”. To have faith in oneself and the chance one has to make that change in the world is one of the determinants (if not the determinant) of the success of a project.

With their faith and confidence, the participants have renewed my faith, motivation, and even the imperative to hold on to believing—how can we not, when they all unreservedly believe in what we have been telling them? This faith alone has allowed us to be optimistic about the future of Mexico.  

I wish the same would one day happen in my country, among my people—in fact, maybe the world needs an “Age of Stupid”. Of course I don’t mean the Age in the sense of the British movie, where the stupidity is in our ignorance or inaction towards the global crisis, but a generation of people to be “stupid” enough to believe in themselves and the others’ ability to change the world.

We need stupid dreamers. We need stupid, idealistic, strong dreamers who are able to take the blow of possible setbacks and failures and say to themselves: “Just do it”. 

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

Sonia Hoi Ching Cheung (Hong Kong , AC '10-'12) 

Day 24 - Time flies when you’re having fun

It’s as if time is teasing us! The moments when we are bored the most the clock seems not to tick, no matter how many times we look; and those moments that we would desperately like to linger on seem to go by as if the clock’s hands were a high speed train in a hurry. For me the last 4 weeks were definitely most like the latter. I’m still astounded that my last blog entry has come, and I cannot tell you how much my mind resists against clicking on the button “post”. Even though the participants were the ones that were supposed to learn from us (which, in my opinion, worked), I cannot help but notice that I have learned a lot as well.

The first workshop I gave I was incredibly nervous (for both the Spanish and the teaching). Over time, though I gained a lot of confidence and my Spanish improved to a level that I didn’t expect to reach in such a short period of time. I have to admit as well, that I’m beginning to understand, and even feel empathy, for teachers. I’ve only stood before classes of a maximum of 16, and noticed how annoying (even motivated) students can be! I also, for the first time, had to really take responsibility for a group of people when we went into San Miguel for example, and I can tell you, you suddenly see everything from an entirely different perspective!

But me aside, the past three days the participants have been working on their own projects, and I, like my co-facilitator before me, think that the projects they come up with are mostly amazing! You see that they have actually applied things we taught them before. This is very rewarding. It is amazing to see so many projects rising from scratch! It shows me several things, one that there are so many things that need fixing, which is in a sense depressing, but the positive thing is that there are also people who want to do something about it in their own ways, which is amazing to see, and in a sense gives me hope. I do hope that the participants will carry on the good work they’re doing after this week. I’m kinda afraid though that some of them got a little bit over exited in a sense that they want too much. Nevertheless, their ideas are great and for as far as I can see now they’re doing great!

Now I’ll have to finish a blog entry for the very last time.

It is time to say goodbye now!

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery but today, today is a gift (that is why they call it the present)”

-Alice Morse Earl-

I’ll enjoy this project for as long as I can! Hope you enjoyed reading my entries.

Hans van Deursen (The Netherlands, UWC AC 10-12)

Day 23 - 2nd Day of Social Project Development Workshops

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light,
not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.


-Marianne Williamson

(alternatively substitute the word God with whatever else is the greatest source of inspiration in your life)



Ingvill Maria Daatland Hekne, Norway (AC 09-11)

Day 22 - Time Flies

Last week, wow. We have already put three weeks behind us in the project and I have had more than five weeks in Mexico altogether. And it still just feels like one or two days. During the day, and especially now that I’m writing probably my last blog post on this blog, I feel like the project and my stay is coming to an end. In a way it makes me sad because it’s been such a good time. I’ve made good friends, some of which I probably won’t see in some time. I’ve had amazing food, wonderful cultural experiences, beautiful moments and loads of fun. I’ll definitely miss the openness and happy attitude of the people here, the culture which is so full of life.

But most of all I’ll miss the project. Luckily we still have one week left and quite possibly the most important week. We are primarily running what we call Social Project Development Workshops. In these the participants have to take all the knowledge, creativity and engagement they have gained throughout the course and put it into a social project of their own. In many ways this is the final outcome of the course. The reason we are arranging it is not just for the participants to have fun and get friends, get wiser or even live a happier life afterwards. We are doing it mainly because we want to turn them into social change makers. The project they are creating now they will take back to their communities and hopefully keep on working with, develop, expand or create new projects. As long as they in some way or the other create social change in the societies they’ll be living in in the future.

I’m really impressed by a lot of the ideas that the participants already have. And the fact that all of the people I’m working with all have clear and engaging ideas for projects they want to do. It really makes me believe in humanity to see them embracing the opportunity they have to do good for other people and society around them. And the same should be possible anywhere in the world. The participants are not very different from young people back home. No matter where you go youth are strangely similar: free, full of humour and with a drive to change the world and see things differently, if they are only given the option, the one experience that empowers them. That’s why I like this project so much. It’s basically pure youth-to-youth empowerment. Without any kind of grown up figures telling us what to do and what’s right and wrong, how we should fit into society. Here we are all equals in the way that we all have to learn, explore, understand and figure out things on our own. Of course there is a structure, and some people are facilitators and some are participants. But that is out of practical reasons and the “teaching”-relationship is more of a mutual co-operation build on consent and will to create. Both we and the participants develop and grow together, as a collective as well as individuals.

For myself I’m also trying to develop a social project of solar panels for houses in my local community. It just feels so completely natural as everybody else are developing their ideas and plan how they are going to help their communities. For me this kind of atmosphere is magic. Hundreds of ideas spinning around in people’s heads, near to reach their first step towards realization. It’s the sound of normal youth taking their everyday lives, their communities into their own hands. It’s the sound of change. It’s the sound of a better world.

Thank you a lot, everybody.

Albert Andersen Øydvin (Norway, AC ‘10-12)