Hello Mynglers

We just received an update from Thea in Guatemala.  Thea is a project coordinator for Foundation Los Ninos which  helps children out of poverty and illiteracy. As she didn’t speak Spanish, Myngle is sponsoring her Spanish lessons! Here are her experiences working on this wonderful project:

“Hello everybody!

First of all I would like to wish you all a happy, healthy and successful year 2010.Unfortunately, the year has started out very bad for Haiti and its inhabitants. Awful! For some reason this news is getting through to me in a different way than it does to the Netherlands.

I finished with my Spanish lessons last Friday. Equipped with all the grammar and the inspiring lessons of my teacher in Guatemala Elsa and my Myngle teacher Paola I will continue in 2010 and now it’s only a question of practice and practice again.

It’s a wonderful language and it’s so great to already be able to catch some conversations from the people  around me. However,  my euphoria was only for a short term. This week I had to order gas by phone and I got a whole flood of Spanish towards me. After 3 attempts of the friendly señorita on the other side of the line, trying to explain something to me having to reply 3 times that I didn’t understand any of it, I got grounded again. Eventually the gas got delivered 45 minutes later. In any case, my order got through clearly.

I can definitely handle a face-to-face conversation in Spanish, but on the phone its a whole different story. However, I do trust that everything will be fine concerning the communication.

This week I started with the activities for the Los Niños. On Tuesday I went to a meeting of  Antigua Network for the target group NGOs. There were about 20 representatives from different foundations.  Several organizations, such as Los  Niños, are busy with this phase of their development.

This is an important subject, because how do you measure the social impact of your activities here? One organization builds houses for families, another one builds standpipes and yet others focus on women rights or education. Therefore some results are easier to measure than others. And how can it be done that a project becomes independent?

Helping countries to develop themselves further is not that easy, but we knew that. Especially when it comes to big amounts its a difficult thing. But the fact that all those private initiatives want to take the step to become professionalized and are all seriously involved is a good thing I think.

I also want to share a story with you guys that has been affecting me already since I got here.”

Stay tuned!  The second part of Thea’s story is coming soon!

Aenn

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 11:25 am and is filed under Myngle News, Social, Team. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.