Ayampe beach

Ayampe!! My first visit to Ecuador's gorgeous coastline and wow what a beautiful peaceful beach and even with clouds hot hOt HoT! (my complaining red-raw skin keeps reminding me of that, but hey it was well worth the burn to hang out with my flatmates and some of their friends by-and-in these huge Pacific waves).  

Beautiful mural from Olón,

 the beachside town we caught our bus home from

…and seeing all this was in celebration of flat-mate Rory's birthday, here's a shot of me Tania and Jonny in our biUtiful wigs for the mad hecticness of Saturday-night Montañita, the party-town of this part of the coast whose streets and beach were like a sandier latino version of a mini Glasto!

:-)

Inductions Week 2

 PEACE HOPE EQUALITY LOVE

My second week here in Guayaquil and I went on visits with my JUCONI co-workers  into some of the sectors where I'll be working facilitating CMAP's Club de Arte .  JUCONI have just graduated a lot of families and so are now in the process of getting to know new families.  This is also the start of a research project into the impact of JUCONI's work so the NT team, who works with individual children and parents in a therapeutic way, are looking for 60 families who need their services: 30 of which will receive the full intervention of individual family visits, a food basket and support with school fees and uniforms; the other 30 of which will only receive check-in phone calls (as I understand it).  This may well be hard for the NT 'orientadores' who are all trained or student psychologists and work on the basis of building strong relationships with the children and parents.  The team also predict that it could cause problems between neighbours who have had initial contact but may be divided in treatment through the anonymous selection process.

Jonny and I also had a chance to chat more about ideas, meet our new JUCONI manager Emilio and also our London-based CMAP manager Olivia… so yes, it's been a really fascinating week!


Thank you for your support / 
Peace: child family dreams heart life, play: 
equal believe invent choice focus, 
Hope: free friends parents education help, 
Laugh: feel, share, transmit, progress, grow

:-)

El Malecón de Guayaquil

My first weekend-after-work the week before last and I started getting to know my new city with a long and hot Sunday walk along the main pier (malecón) of Guayaquil.  You get a good view of the estuary from this lighthouse at the top of Las Peñas - a neighbourhood of colourful houses jumbled up the sides of a hill that had me thinking of the views in Rio de Janeiro of the favelas.  Here I felt proper looked out for as first one then another chatty security police stopped me to talk.

:-)

SB shout-out!

Views of Cocha and its taller-than-the-one-in-Rio statue of Christ at the top of the hill by our SB house. This one is 33 and a bit metres high compared to a spot-on 33m high one in Brazil - because "Jesus was 33 and a bit old when he died" so I'm told!

Yay, I got a shout out this week from Sustainable Bolivia here on the previous art residents section of their website. :-)

Here too is the really lovely piece Jonathan wrote about me and my work as SB's artist-in-resdient back in December (thanks Jonathan!):

Kim Alexander               

Artista Extraordinaire

We’ve been really blessed to have such a talented and dynamic group of artists be a part of our residency program in 2013, and Kim Alexander is no different. After receiving great referrals from friend and previous artist in residence Camilla Brendon (July-October 2013), we were excited to welcome Kim Alexander and her skills as a 2D animator and art educator to Cochabamba. Just take one look at her website, www.kimalexander.co.uk, to realize that Kim is not only an expert illustrator, but has the delicatetouch and technological expertise necessary to animate all those little movements into a beautiful story. 

Like most art residents, Kim arrived in Cochabamba curious and eager to explore the city and learn more about SB’s partner organizations. It didn’t take but a few days before her schedule was completely booked with several projects, not to mention her weekly climbs up Cochabamba’s famous Cristo  de la Concordia and salsa dance classes. At the moment Kim is busy working on a stop animation film with the kids at CAICC, making canvas collages that will represent the girls of INFANTE through different patterns and colors, assisting AVE (audio visual educativo) organize a workshop on 2D animation basics, and making live art as a member of the METAMORPHOSIS team, a collaboration of progressive artists that live and work in Cochabamba. 

Kim has undertaken projects in Peru, El Salvador, Brazil, Morocco, and now Bolivia and has also cycled through Central America to raise funds for the UK based charity Macmillan Cancer Support. After life at Sustainable Bolivia, Kim has her eyes set on Ecuador, where she’ll be spending a year working with CMAP and JUCONI as an arts educator.

I love you Cochabamba and the SB-Cocha family -  streets full of colour (and romantic graffiti!) and folk full of smiles! :-)

Thanks SB for 3 totally brilliant months working with you and being made so welcome as part of the SB-Cochabamba family!
:-)