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!
:-)

Happy at the end of my first week in Guayaquil :-)

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') 

:-)

An unexpected morning in Miami!

Heading back out to South America last week a delayed landing at Miami airport left me stranded after missing my connecting flight to Guayaquil, Ecuador.  The silver-lining to this was an overnight stay in a deluxe hotel courtesy of the airline, food vouchers gigantic bed and all!  (The negative side the sweaty stressing in the airport trying to make the connection and then again later when I couldn't get through to JUCONI staff to warn them not to try picking me up at the Guayaquil airport.)

My two traveling companions this time: Lily's now well-travelled buddy Moley and his new side-kick, Amelie's Bruno-the-Bear. Thanks girls for giving me their company  - we'll keep sending through photos for your Moley photo albums, so keep an eye out!

Plus having an unexpected morning in the city gave me the opportunity to wander the art-covered streets of Wynwood in mid-town Miami… here are some of my favourites of the amazing HUGE murals coating the streets of that neighbourhood (because of time I had to choose between visiting the murals or the beach, so having chosen the murals was glad to see the beach in one of the murals - see top of post).

(left) Art is my weapon / 

(right) Education and a good cup is key… (the wall of a Wynwood cafe)

LOVE PEACE RESPECT UNITY EQUALITY FREEDOM

MAKE YOUR OWN WAY

 HOLD ON TIGHT TO YOUR DREAMS

HEEART THIS CITY

Big love (from Guayaquil a week later)

:-)

Happy New Year 2014!

Big huge thanks to all of you back home here in the UK who have made my start to 2014 such a brilliant one!!  :-)

I arrived back into London on the 8th of Jan and now as I write it's the early hours of the morning on the 23rd and I am all set to fly out to Ecuador later today.  It's been a brilliant and beautiful couple of weeks (that have flown by all too fast!) seeing everyone, getting to know my new nephew Tobias, obtaining my visa for Ecuador and hearing more details about my upcoming position in Guayacil from my lovely CMAP supervisor Olivia Sixsmith. 

With about 10 hours left before I fly I am feeling hugely excited about finally heading towards Ecuador, meeting my new colleagues at  JUCONI and getting started working. I'm hoping that I can do as good a job as possible for the kids out there over this coming year.  

Also know I will miss all of you folk here at home hugely - so sending huge hugs and love to you all!

(left) birds and mist in Finsbury Park (right) giant 15ft blue cockerel by Katharina Fritsch on the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square - I love London!

Big love from beautiful brilliant London!
:-)