So a year since my original interview, and after a random stop-off in Miami, I've finally made it to Ecuador and my new home in the coastal town of Guayaquil - brilliant! And what a lovely welcome: my new boss Merli Lopez and her family picked me up at the airport and when they dropped me off to my room the bed was made up and a stock of goodies left on the desk including cereal, milk, juice and loo-paper. Merli also kindly invited me to her house on the Saturday night where I met a lot of my now-colleagues at the goodbye party of volunteer Poen in the most light-hearted of ways - drinking, dancing, playing billiards and even singing karaoke!
Domestic violence does not stay at home. It invades the streets, schools, businesses… it affects all of us. JUCONI booklet (left) and (right) work produced by the kids attending CLUB de ARTE in 2013 with Jonny and Tracey, showing images of their communities on the Guayaquil estuaries in the north and south of the city.
I also finally met my work-partner for the year, a lovely lad from Leeds, Jonny, who I'll be working alongside as arts educators with the Charlotte Miller Art Project (CMAP) here in Guayaquil. CMAP support disadvantaged children and young people in the UK, Brazil and here in Ecuador, and in working with them we will be tailoring our art workshops to coincide with their objective: to help the children who participate in their personal and social development by providing creative opportunities for them to explore, express and enjoy themselves. Jonny has been volunteering here with CMAP since February last year, so has been brilliant in showing me the CMAP ropes in our 'Club de Arte' office - thanks Jonny! The work he and previous partner Tracey facilitated with the kids can be seen on the CMAP blog here.
As part of CMAP Jonny and I will working in partnership with local NGO Junto Con Los Niños (JUCONI), facilitation art workshops for children from disadvantaged neighbourhoods of Guayaquil. JUCONI work with street-working and at-risk children and their families with a long-term holistic model of therapeutic intervention which I have been fascinated to learn more about this week through my induction sessions and a staff training day today. A lot of the JUCONI methodology reminds me of the approach implemented by Kids Company and their Family Model in London, which excites me because I feel like I will learn a lot here and build on all that I learned on the Kids Co PDC in Therapeutic Communication.
The logistical part of my placement has been organised with impressive attention-to-detail by CMAP’s partner-charity back home, the UK branch of The Inter-Cultural Youth Exchange (ICYE-UK). I reached my fundraising target of £4,500 for ICYE-UK back in August last year with the amazing help and support of all you family and friends - thank you so very much! I am keeping my Justgiving fundraising page open here because any funds raised from this point on will come directly through CMAP to Jonny and I to use for extra materials and equipment for Club de Arte. We have a monthly budget of $US100 for basic materials like paint, paper, brushes etc, but would like to be able to potentially buy extra supplies like blank t-shirts, a sewing machine and print photo-booklets. So if you would like to support our work with the JUCONI kids any donation would be hugely appreciated and we will keep you updated on what we use it for here and on the CMAP blog.
Sending a happy and excited big love from my new home
here in the intensely sunny, rainy and humid Guayaquil (a city much greener than the concrete-jungle I imagined because of the heavy rains typical of Ecuadorian 'winter')
:-)
