Hola Mynglers,

We have a last update from Thea for you. We have followed her doing humanitarian work in Guatemala over a period of time now. As you might already know, Myngle has sponsored her Spanish lessons to enable her to communicate.

“Hi Everyone,

This will be the last mail from Antigua. First of all I would like to thank you for the heart full and often encouraging reactions that I have received to the previous mails. It is really inspiring to find people who can empathize with me.

I still have about two weeks to go.The development and preparation of a family program are most important in this coming period.

This training program aims at providing tools for parents and children which can help with the development of their skills in the interaction within the family. Domestic violence is a huge issue here and we hope that this program will stabilize the families and make a positive contribution to reduce negative behavior patterns that are used when raising children. We want to offer the program to 10 families( parents and two children per family). It is still a pilot, but if it succeeds, the training will be offered to more families.

The inhibition threshold is extremely high. Particularly the fathers, who play a key role are hard to integrate and motivate. They are strongly needed, if something is supposed to change within the family. In the first meetings we especially have to work on trust and security. It’s a big challenge.

This morning we presented the program to 9 mothers from children of the first class of the elementary school  Bendición de Díos in Alotenango. We started out with a relaxation exercise and they all participated immediately with enthusiasm. By using the Flintstones as a metaphor we could explain the roles of the “facilitadores” and could also sketch the content of the program. The parents have never been to school and are not used to work in groups. So with easy games and exercises we first have to pave this way. To our great surprise they were all very enthusiastic.
In the end they also dared to ask questions and everything went really smoothly. I think its great that I still get to be a part of this.

I had a great time and learned a lot here.Inspired I will return from the sun to our cold country on February 26. The thought alone makes me homesick for Antigua. Starting march 1st I will resume  my activities in the Netherlands and there will be place in my agenda for new tasks. I hope to find the Dutch economy in a healthier state than it was when I left!

I want to thank you Marina, that you gave me the opportunity to have lessons Spanish before I left the Netherlands, muchas gracias Paola por tus lecciones de inspiración y nuestras conversaciones agradables and thank you Aenn for translating my mails into a blog.”

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 10:02 am and is filed under Social. 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.