I Matter

Last week was my first session of Yo Merezco in Jardines. For those who don’t speak PCVH lingo, translated it means “I Matter” and it’s a club for young girls to build self-esteem and confidence. We once a week with a different theme and art projects, games and homework that reinforces the week’s message. The topics are things like communication, self-esteem, puberty education, HIV prevention, role-models, good decision-making and then some. And its all written out in a cutesy easy-to-use manual published by Peace Corps Honduras- which makes things fairly easy on me as far as lesson planning goes. I’ve done parts of this program before in other communities, and with varying degrees of success. So this time I made arrangements to do it right – meaning I petitioned the municipality to help me pay for the bulk of the materials. And much to my surprise they actually did. (Stick with me, this post gets more interesting I promise)

Our first meeting went pretty well. I solicited the entire 5^th grade class at the elementary school in Jardines (just the girls that is) and out of 15, 12 showed up for our first meeting. Which to me, is a roaring success given the level of accountability that most Hondurans live by. By and large it’s a very sweet group of girls that are energetic (duh) and eager to participate. One girl’s mom is super supportive. If there was a PTA, she would be its president, treasurer and snack committee. So far she has come to the beginning of both meetings to help me track down the person with the key to our meeting room to let us in. And then she wants to make sure the fans are working, we have enough chairs for everyone one, and from what I hear, reminds all the other parents in her barrio about meetings.

The one issue I have with the lovely Yo Merezco ladies is the sub-par level of creativity and  think-for-yourself-ness. In general I think it’s simply a Honduran thing, since the normal method of public education is more along the lines of memorize and regurgitate information. So there isn’t much place for creativity in the school system and they really aren’t taught to think for themselves. At all.

An example:

For one of our first activities, I had each one of the girls cut out a silhouette of their hand, on construction paper. Then I was going to read different questions and they were to write the answers on the different fingers of the hand. Perhaps I didn’t explain the directions very well, but when I said (loosely translated)  “write down a goal you have for your life” they all wrote down exactly verbatim “a goal you have for your life”.

Honestly I was floored.

Were the directions really that complicated? Is my Spanish still that bad?

Once I explained that they were supposed to answer the question with their own response and not just copy down everything that I said aloud, they caught on – sort of. My next question was, “write down someone who you admire, for example, your grandmother”. So what happened? They all wrote down “my grandmother”. Every single one of them. Which I guess perhaps they all do, which is fine and great. But I tried really hard to explain the concept of coming up with an example from you own life rather than writing exactly what the teacher suggests.

It’s like none of them want to take a risk because they are afraid of being wrong. What they don’t realize is that, unlike in school,  here there is no wrong answer.  I think this example can be applied to other parts of Honduran culture, and perhaps might explain why there aren’t very many entrepreneurs and creative thinkers in Honduras, as compared to other Hispanic/Spanish-speaking countries.

But I digress.

For our second meeting, I thought long and hard about ways to incorporate genuine creativity. For starters, we played a dynamica (ice breaker) that everyone on the planet has played before in some capacity. We are going to a “party”, and everyone has to “bring something”, and it has to start with the same letter as your first name. And then we go around in the circle and your neighbor has to repeat what everyone before them said until the last person has to repeat the details of everyone in the circle. Good for two reasons. 1. I still don’t know all their names. 2. They can’t possibly copy each other because they all have different initials. Ha.

So when I went first, I said “my name is Sarah and I am bringing sandia (watermelon) to the fiesta”. The second girl caught on and repeated my name and my party item, but then she got totally stressed out because she couldn’t think of a fruit that starts with K (because my example was a fruit).

If I had rolled my eyes any harder they would have gotten stuck in the top of my head.

As I said before, I blame the school system here. (And perhaps also the lack of a feminist movement and/or sexual revolution in Honduras as a whole but that’s for a later post…) Anyway it’s something many of us Peace Corps volunteers struggle with, especially working with young people. I guess you could say I’ve made it my personal goal to help this group of girls to be more creative, but more importantly get them to start thinking for themselves.

After all, how are they ever supposed to say no to drugs or the peer-pressure to have sex at a young age if they can’t truly think for themselves? That idea alone that is the backbone of the entire Yo Merezco initiative. I’m not positive but I believe this particular Peace Corps Initiative got national funding just on the concept of curbing teenage pregnancy rates*.

Anyway I’m having a lot of fun with my little girls club, and I think they are having fun too. Especially since there were 12 at the first meeting and by the second week all 15 girls in the 5th grade showed up plus one girl’s little sister. We have 12 sessions left and then a closing ceremony party where the families are invited and they all get diplomas and cake and stuff! (It’s decided. The theme is going to be pink.) And the best part is I have a signed document  from the municipality saying they are going to pay for the whole thing. Boo-ya.

Here they are with their completed hand cut-outs before we made them into a mural. Which then showed that they all admire their grandmother, they all want to be a teacher when they grow up, and they all like hamburgers over every other food.

[sigh]

We’ve got some work to do.

-Sarita

*I think I’ve mentioned this before, but teenage pregnancy is rampant in this country. I mean the statistics are staggering, and just like a lot of other things right now, Honduras’s stats are some of the worst in Central America. One source says that over 53% of births are to non-married mothers. The University of California San Francisco HIV Institute says that nearly 30% of all births are to mothers under the age of 18(!) however UNICEF says its only 26% who have their baby between the ages of 15-19. Either way, I can’t count how many times I’ve seen teenage mothers in the health center, sometimes as young as 17 that are pregnant with their second or yes, third child. Absolutely. Shocking.