Day 10 - Respect

Today was incredible in many ways-- incredibly difficult (at times), but also incredibly rewarding. The day started with the Community Service Sessions: in my case construction. What we do in a nutshell is building a house for people in slums.

To see the participants work like they do in the Construction session is incredible, as they put so much energy in the overwhelming sun with hardly any breaks or food. A lot was done today, two and a half walls were plastered and brushed, real headway was made with the stove and 3 entire walls were painted. It was amazing, but we had to overcome some real problems! There were sunstrokes and 2 absent facilitators (one due to illness, and the other had to bring a participant to the doctor), and overcoming them resulted in my being completely exhausted afterwards.

What followed were the creative workshops, which were, for me, very enjoyable. Although I'm still (like my predecessor in blog writing) very much bothered by my limited spanish, although the participants are really (incredibly) helpful, it is still impossible to be who I want to be as a facilitator due to the language barrier. In my session, however, all the participants were very energised and showed a lot of initiative, which was very good to see!

The Evening Activity that followed was very relaxing as we did some (easy) fun games, which was incredible after such a tiring day.

Another big theme that was visible throughout the day was Respect, with the focus on the Facilitator-Participant relationship. It came up often during the day, for example in my family session, but this was not all! The participants had requested a meeting with both facilitators and participants, in which they wanted to apologise for any disrespect they might have shown the facilitators, and, in particular, Pato, the incredible organiser of this project. What I found very impressive is that it all came from the participants, without any interference or prompts from the facilitators. So I would like to end with saying that I think that the participants have done this amazingly! And that it really was one of the things that brightened up my day!

Even though there were some problems, I still think it was an amazing day! Looking forward to the next one!

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