YOUTH OF THE "REAL CARTAGENA" - Cartagena, Colombia Jan 2016

YOUTH OF THE "REAL CARTAGENA"

Cartagena, Colombia January 2016

With friends Mercy and Alex

Learning leadership skills

Since it was our first volunteer opportunity after we "hit the runway" in December, we had no idea what to expect in Cartagena. After visiting Bogota and Medellin, we returned in early January to work with Domino Volunteers, founded by Christina Kuntz, a former Peace Corps worker, tied to the country she loved and the Colombian man she fell in love with, Jota. 

Another smiling face

Christina has leveraged her relationships with local foundations to pair international volunteers with the right opportunities. Our original volunteer placement was supposed to be for a literacy project through the Afro-Caribe foundation.

The boys loved computer time

She was able to arrange a meeting with a local tour guide, Alex Rocha, who founded a youth center with his wife, Mercy. He had an incredible story--from gang member doing drugs to community role model and benefactor. 

We also met with a technology foundation, Caribe Mesh (Jorge and Jose), who had a mission to place low-cost computers in barrio schools. The literacy project had a donation of 15 laptop computers that were just sitting in a box and we were able to get permission to use them. It looked like a good opportunity for collaboration.

Hard at work

The executive director of Afro-Caribe, an Australian woman Martha, wanted to teach local teens how to create a social enterprise. 

Ready to present

We felt, however, the curriculum was far too sophisticated for young teens and was especially inappropriate for the low-income youth we were going to teach. 


Merging both our skill sets we decided to teach a three-week leadership program utilizing technology, which we appropriately named "Liderazgo y Technologia." 

Mike offering assistance

Martha denied our request for funds but we remained undeterred;  instead, we decided to self-fund the program, supplying all materials and snacks. It turned out to be the right move. We quickly got to work developing the curriculum from scratch. The apartment had a chalk-board wall which we loved using to develop lesson plans each night. 

It's show time!

We held class three times per week from 3pm-5pm. Anywhere from 20 to as many as 34 students participated.  These were youth from one of the poorest barrios in Cartagena and many of them had never used a computer. 

We provided a snack of avena, a sweet oatmeal drink, for every class prepared by a neighbor as a gesture of goodwill (and to avoid the suggested snacks of soda and cookies).

Showing off their certificates

After the first two weeks we had an interesting meeting with Alex, during which he mentioned there were shootings taking place between feuding families just down the road from the center. Once he had left, we had a brief discussion about whether we should continue. We both agreed we were committed to finishing what we had started.

The proud female graduates with Christina

For the last week the youth were tasked with developing PowerPoint presentations based on the issues they saw in their communities and how they proposed to deal with them. These included topics like anti-bullying, protecting the environment, and creating safe communities. In all honesty, we weren't sure they were going to show up for the "real work."

But as soon as they entered the center each day, they got started. On the last day, despite the stultifying heat and the blaring music from across the street, they arrived all dressed up and gave their presentations --and, as instructed, didn't simply read their PowerPoint but spoke beautifully. We don't know who was prouder, the students or their teachers.