Day 1 - The Beginning

Hola!

Welcome to the blog featuring the social project ¡Integrando a México!

Here we will be blogging daily about the project as it progresses and give you all an insight into our daily lives for the next month or so. We are the facilitators of the course that makes up the social project. Coming from different parts of the world, we are a part of the UWC movement and have gone to or are currently attending one of the 13 United World Colleges around the world. This summer, we are taking our experience of bridging different groups of peoples and creating a better world from our UWCs to Mexico.

This year the project is celebrating its third year in action, and it’s growing stronger than ever! Starting out as a summer project purely based in Atlantic College and much of an experiment, the project has established a solid foundation and reputation, and has grown to also include facilitators from the UWC in USA. The original aims of cultural integration, social empowerment and youth-to-youth learning are still dominating in an extended program of activities, workshops, discussions, games, films, creativity workshops, sports, etc.

 

For a week now we have been preparing the course’s program: preparing presentations, struggling with schedules and in general creating practical applications for all the theoretical ideas covered in the course. All together, we, a group of 13 young people, have been staying in a house in the centre of San Miguel de Allende.  The week has been a wonderful mix of fun, serious work, not-so-serious work, sightseeing, Spanish-practicing, fantastic Mexican food, mariachi bands in the central square and a massive amount of very pretty colonial architecture. We have been planning the creative workshops, conflict engagement workshops, social issue activities, morning games, community service, evening games, films and possibly most important of all the facilitation of the creation of the participants’ own social projects. All of this building up until today—the start of the course!

Finally we got to meet the participants of the course! They are a group of 42 youths from different parts of Mexico, aging 15-18 years old. From the time we got up and had breakfast, we could feel the tension rising as we got ready and walked to the bus pick-up. The moment we walked into the bus with half of them on it was very nice. The curiosity we had for them was mutual, and they were just as excited about seeing us as we were about seeing them. As we got to the location of the course, a school on the outskirts of San Miguel, and started with games and icebreakers, a lot of the tension loosened up. Both we and the participants calmed down a bit and gained more confidence as we went along. After more games and food we presented different parts of the course to the participants: the creative workshops, social issue activities, and the various community services. Then came the moment when the participants had to choose their sessions. Remembering summer camps, festivals and conferences where I had to choose my own workshops, concerts or whatever, I recognized the frustration of having to choose between stuff when you want to join everything!

 

In the middle of all the participants’ writing of choices, I look at my watch and was shocked by the time—it’s almost 18.15! That’s 8 hours and 15 minutes that passed in what seems like 10 minutes since we walked on the bus. After some Frisbee, football and ‘HUAH’(awesome circle game) we all had to say goodbyes and jump onto the bus back to our house.

Now, having eaten supper, I can happily conclude that the first day was a success full of fun and meaning.  The thing that was especially satisfying was the attitude of the participants, as they were all in all very keen and engaged. This is of course really nice, but it also puts extra pressure on us to perform as well as possible and give them the frame they need to really unfold. Good and happy times—let’s hope it continues like this!

-        Albert Andersen Øydvin (AC '10-'12) - Norway