Hi all.
Hope you are all doing well. A lot has been going on here and have been slowly writing this up for a while so am sorry for the delay.
So much has been going on out here it is hard to summarise. So I’m not going to summarise. I’m going to write a lot. Just thought I would let you know that now.
I have been having a really good time working with Viva; seeing the impact and influence they have been and currently are having on street child projects across Central and South America. Just to remind you, Viva works with projects through Christian networks helping to develop their quality, unity and impact, bringing them together to offer the best possible care to street children (www.viva.org).
Over the last month I have been visiting projects as part of the Quality Improvement Systems Verification team. This is a process which involves having a set of standards and going through them with members of staff, analysing which standards are being met, which are not, and most importantly, identifying in which areas improvements can be made. There are 6 units which cover a vast range of activities a project partakes in; People Care, Governance, Child Protection, Child Well-being, Project Planning and Design and Financial Accountability. I went through two units with each of the three projects I visited - People Care and Financial Accountability. Each project I visited was incredibly different in size which proved interesting and gave me a great insight. The first was a well-established day-care centre. The second and third were both very small Church-based projects operating on little resources in poor communities. One of which was a ‘comedor’, providing meals and entertaining children each weekend with games and activities as well as teaching them a message from the Bible. It was great to learn about these projects and see how they work with what they receive and in response to the needs around them. The people working at them were so passionate and humble. They go about their business and are happy to do it with little or no return or recognition. Many of us in England carrying out similar work may get the chance to speak at a conference or up at the front in Church, however these people just get on with it. I guess that’s a challenge for us, to consistently ask ourselves with what motives we are living by and serving people with.
I have also been helping out at a foster care project called Casa Viva two days a week. They challenge Churches to care for children by encouraging families to receive children at high-risk with the goal of honouring and ultimately restoring them back to healthy biological family environments. While a child is being fostered the biological family is being educated on how to run a family and how relationships between family members should function. I have had a great time working with Casa Viva with the majority of my time being spent on helping them prepare for workshops with potential Casa Viva parents. These workshops have involved going through with the parents the process of taking a child at high-risk into foster care. The emphasis was on helping the families to understand from the child’s perspective what they would be going through having to leave their biological home and to move in with a family of strangers. The idea of Casa Viva is to provide an alternative to orphanages. The best possible place for a child to be brought up in is in a family. This is what Casa Viva is trying to do. While orphanages provide children with a better living situation than what they would be in, it is still not a viable long-term solution providing what could be the best outcomes. I have read stories of orphanages being started up and taking in 20-30 children and with years gone by this number has grown and grown. Many of those children have grown up and left orphanages, uneducated and with no real knowledge of how to survive in the world, and then their children have been neglected and ended up at the same orphanages. Therefore in effect, some orphanages could be to some extent creating their own business, although this is all dependable on a number of factors. It is therefore vital that where possible, children are brought up in loving, family surroundings and it is key that they are taught and well-educated so that when they grow up they are not starting up another generation of children in need. Having visited some orphanages and met some of the children living with Casa Viva parents a clear personality difference seems to stand out to me. I remember visiting an orphanage once and within five minutes I must have had at least five or six children climbing all over me, all with their arms outstretched wanting more and more attention. It seemed that no trust needed to be built between me and these children. They simply wanted a rare bit of attention. With the children I have met being fostered there is always that element of caution in their eye when you first meet them. They look at you and wonder who you are, often hiding behind their parents wanting reassurance whether this person is good. That trust needs to be built and that is something that needs to be learned in relationships from an early age.
Away from work further fun has been had. Had a ‘little venture’ (*massive understatement: this involved a total of 19 hours bus riding of which 5 hours was queuing at the border to get a pretty stamp on my passport* it is really pretty though*) to Nicaragua a couple of weeks ago. I went with a friend and we stayed with some friends of his in the capital, Managua. Nicaragua is a really beautiful country – very mountainous and volcanic and very hot. One highlight included enjoying a bit of cows tongue – highly recommended. It’s a bit squishy and the texture is a little off-putting but it tastes great. Try putting that one on the menu for Christmas next year Mum. We also visited a volcano, an active one. It’s had its odd eruption over the last few years so precautions had to be taken, one being having a very strict reverse parking policy so it is possible to escape quickly if an eruption did occur.
At the moment everyone is now on their Christmas break. Basically for two weeks over Christmas and New Year the whole of Costa Rica shuts down and everyone has a good time, this for many being two of the three weeks holiday they get for the year. They obviously like to save it up until the seasonal time of the year (although they do seem to have a million excuses to have a bank holiday. There must have been at least five since I have been here, the latest being ‘National Culture Day’. Why can’t we have one of them?). The last week of work involved party upon party. Now I am making up for it by sleeping a lot. 6am starts on the trot each day since the 23rd September is something I envisaged would be humanely impossible for me. Fellow Liverpool housemates and my mother will surely level with me on that one.
I have been staying with a great couple called Jorge and Maria. They have been really good to me and have adopted me and treated me like a prince. I’m not allowed to lay a hand on the kitchen sink. I really hope I haven’t lost all my cooking expertise that I worked really hard on throughout my four years at University. I will be spending Christmas with them and their family. Four of their six children will be coming round along with grandchildren so it’s not looking like it’s going to be a quiet one. Home is being missed big time, more than I thought it would be, but I’m thankful for Christmases had and a great family. I’m gutted to be missing out on all the snow you lot are getting, but I’ll settle with 25 degrees of sunshine. Commiserations to Simon Cowell for not getting what he wanted in the Christmas charts this year and sorry to those who missed out on buying the infamous ginger Christmas card from Tescos (see - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/north_yorkshire/8411894.stm). Hope you’re not too offended Mum. And here’s hoping for a Boxing Day win for the Reds. They need it.
Next destination is Cochabamba, Bolivia. Flying on New Year’s Day, so I’ll write to you all next from there. Please love me and send me emails wishing me a Happy Christmas. I love to hear from everyone.
I’ll leave you with what seems to be our version of ‘We Wish you a Merry Christmas’ that has been ringing in the streets for the last two months - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihW56Xa3XGQ (You really don’t have to listen to all of it, you pretty much get the drift after the first 30-40 seconds).
Feliz Navidad.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
"Pura Vida"
Hello all. Hope you’re all well. Well this is my official first ever blog. I hope they’re ok and make interesting reading.
Well, have been here for about 4 weeks now and so far so good. I got here and I’m still here. Thought I would start this to keep you all informed of what I’m up to. Read ahead if you’re interested.
The flight out here wasn’t as dull as I thought it would be. I actually managed to sleep through the take-off so to wake up over the Atlantic was a surprise! Sitting next to me was a girl also going to Costa Rica. The ice was broken when she spilt her lunch all over her, so we buddied up and kept each other company at the stop-over in Newark. I arrived in the capital, San Jose, that evening. Was great to have Carmen and Karen, two of the lovely ladies working at Viva, greeting me at the other end!
I’m staying with a cute, little, non English-speaking couple called Jorge and Maria. They are amazing. Really welcoming and so nice. I like my food. Going by the kind of food I had in Guatemala (McDonalds most days, beans in some sick sauce with pita bread for breakfast, rice rice rice, etc) I was a tad worried. The prospect of not having a bowl of cereal for 12 months wasn’t a great one. But they do have cereal (and peanut butter; a popular Costa Rican import) and Maria is an amazing cook. She really is. So I’m happy. The neighbourhood is great. Not a lot different to Smithdown Road, Liverpool. You could replace the ever-screaming kids for partying students, the van with a big megaphone that drives past selling fruit each morning at 6am for the late night ‘ice-cream van’ (which we’re pretty sure sells drugs), cockroaches for rats (I’d rather take a cockroach any day) and the 86 bus for my two cheap, not legally-licensed, very friendly taxi drivers; Rodrigo and his son, Rodrigo. However nothing can explain the pick-up truck with a full brass band sat in the back – trumpets, trombones, French horn, cymbals, the lot... – driving up and down our street playing what seemed to be orchestral reggae music the other morning at 5am. That was just weird.
“Pura vida” = good life. The Tico’s love this.
As you probably know I’m volunteering with an organisation called Viva. Check them out... http://www.viva.org/AboutViva.aspx?linkidentifier=id&itemid=242 They’re great! Viva works in partnership with local networks to give vulnerable children a happier, healthier and brighter future, free from deprivation, exploitation and abuse. Some of the partners they work with include Tearfund, Toybox and World Vision. So far I’ve had a few inductions to the current and prospective structuring of the organisation, met all the members of staff at the office and had a good chat with each of them about their roles, and have been studying what’s called ‘QIS’ (Quality Improvement Systems) as this is what I’ll be doing when I get sent out to projects in Bolivia, Peru and Argentina from January. QIS basically involves getting alongside and training street child project managers to improve the running of their project in 6 areas: People care, Financial Accountability, Child Wellbeing, Project Planning and Design, Child Protection and Governance. It’s all about working with the organisations and helping them to improve and strive to achieve the standards set in each category. The big challenge is that most of these project managers are from somewhat under-educated backgrounds. Therefore concepts such as planning, strategy, monitoring and evaluation are all quite alien to them meaning the process of helping and training them can be quite challenging. Between now and December I am writing up a manual for a Project Planning and Design workshop which so far I am enjoying doing and is going well. Everyone at the office is great fun and it’s been quality getting to know them all. Working for Viva I have come to realise more and more how amazing their work is! It is not just impressive, with positive results, but they provide a strategy that works, and one that I believe has the potential to impact globally. Please have a look at their website and see what they’re all about. I really do believe they have a wonderful structure put together that can have long-term effects on actually solving the worldwide crisis of children living on the streets and living lives no way near as abundant as they should be.
I am spending Tuesday and Thursday mornings with a project called ‘Casa Viva’ who partner with Viva. Check them out http://www.casaviva.org/Casa_Viva_Model.asp They’re great too! They seek to provide an alternative to orphanages and children’s homes by encouraging fostering. They believe that these current, popular solutions will not solve orphan crisis and that it is much better for a child to grow up in a family atmosphere, as every child should have the chance to be. So far this has been working to great effect. Casa Viva have been connecting children with Christian families in their home countries. While the child is being raised in a loving environment the biological parents are being taught, counselled and educated by Casa Viva staff with the focus on them learning how relationships should work within a family. The goal is to have the child reintegrated into its biological family when ready. Casa Viva believes that the local Church is God’s first plan for children in need. They therefore invite Churches to develop care ministries that support families who open their doors to children. The Churches commit to recruiting and supporting the families, and they make a financial commitment to help care for the children. In Costa Rica there are an estimated 3,000 street children and an estimated 3,000 Churches. The goal for one country all of a sudden sounds somewhat realistic...
Each day I am taking Spanish classes in the afternoons. It is a 7 week intensive course (and I mean, intense) which will run until the end of November. So far they’ve thrown a lot at us. Classes have varied from studying the three “to be” verbs (why not just one?!) to practicing conversational speaking within the class, such as, “What is this?”... “That is a spoon.” It looks as if the idea is to get taught as many methods as possible, basically to the extent that we get them and then to put them into practice. We won’t all be fluent by the end of the 7 weeks, they tell us that. They say that once you start speaking and practicing it you will slowly start understanding and fitting it together, hopefully so much so that responses such as “that is a spoon” will come more naturally and quicker. So it looks that while I’m out in Bolivia, Peru and Argentina next year with no option but to speak Spanish because of my work, that is when it should really start kicking in, hopefully. As Jorge, my non-English speaking ‘Tico Papa’ says, “When there is a will, there is a way.” Amen. (He also knows all the words, verses and chorus, in English to Ray Evans’ classic, ‘Que Sera, Sera’ – he sees this as a big achievement).
I’ve been learning quite a bit since being here. I’ve been thinking and reading a bit about God’s love, the suffering in our world and where we fit in response to all this. I am reading a book at the moment called ‘The Shack’ (sorry Granny, I’ll return it when I next see you!). It is probably one of the most extraordinary books I have ever read and one which I have learned so much from and will probably read again when I have finished. I definitely recommend it. Without giving too much away... it is a fictional story about a family that go camping for a weekend, during which one of their daughters gets kidnapped and murdered. Mack, the father, many years later gets invited back to the place where the murder occurred for an *insert adjective; it’s hard to describe...* weekend to confront the pain-bearing issues he has about his 6-year-old daughters’ sudden disappearance and murder.
Here is a quote from the book:
God talking to Mack –
“All evil flows from independence, and independence is your choice. If I were to simply revoke all the choices of independence, the world as you know it would cease to exist and love would have no meaning. This world is not a playground where I keep all my children free from evil. Evil is the chaos of this age that you brought to me, but it will not have the final say. Now it touches everyone that I love, those who follow me and those who don’t. If I take away the consequences of people’s choices, I destroy the possibility of love. Love that is forced is no love at all.”
“You demand your independence, but then complain that I actually love you enough to give it to you.”
The book explores deeply complex issues including freedom, reality, relationships, grace, heaven, evil, pain and suffering. I read the quote above last night and it really struck a chord. So often we want God to intervene; to stop this murder, that broken relationship, that car accident, but then on the other side of the coin we want it our own way. We want to be in control and don’t want God to influence our decisions. As a Christian I have seen and experienced God intervening and have witnessed it in other people’s lives by the means of prayer. However God does not follow our every command, he has silences, and we have our independence too which he gave us. Suffering definitely brings about perseverance and makes us stronger. Life is not always just going to be a walk in the park, God didn’t intend it that way.
Knowing and learning these truths has helped have a huge impact on me in the face of the work I am doing. Day by day it is overwhelming to hear stories of children living on the streets in hugely tough conditions, fighting for survival and not having anyone to care for them. In the face of this it is so easy to point the finger at God and blame him, when actually when you look at it we should be thankful to him for giving us independence and not making us robots, allowing us to have the choice to love. We should instead be examining ourselves and the human race for making a complete mess of our world. The great news though is that pain and suffering on this earth is not the end. Despite us messing things up and taking advantage of the independence God has given us he has still stepped in and forgiven us through the sacrifice of his son, Jesus, for all of mankind’s sin. Through this he has made the way for us to be forgiven and to have an eternal relationship with him. All we have to do is believe this message! Good stuff that.
Well that’s it for now. It’s been a fun few weeks. The whole novelty of being here is great and I’m settling in well. It’s hard being away from family, friends, a drumkit, Match of the Day, Basil, Granny’s roasts etc, but I am absolutely loving it and everyone has been so great over here. Would love to hear how all you are doing so feel free to ping me an email. Would be great to stay in touch. Thanks for reading my first blog. Will be blogging again in a few weeks with hopefully a bit more news and stories to tell!
Till then, ciao ciao
X
PS. For photos check out my facebook. Definitely more to come. If you haven't quite made the world of facebook yet, find a friend who has. Or I might upload some on here if I can, will have a look after posting this!
Well, have been here for about 4 weeks now and so far so good. I got here and I’m still here. Thought I would start this to keep you all informed of what I’m up to. Read ahead if you’re interested.
The flight out here wasn’t as dull as I thought it would be. I actually managed to sleep through the take-off so to wake up over the Atlantic was a surprise! Sitting next to me was a girl also going to Costa Rica. The ice was broken when she spilt her lunch all over her, so we buddied up and kept each other company at the stop-over in Newark. I arrived in the capital, San Jose, that evening. Was great to have Carmen and Karen, two of the lovely ladies working at Viva, greeting me at the other end!
I’m staying with a cute, little, non English-speaking couple called Jorge and Maria. They are amazing. Really welcoming and so nice. I like my food. Going by the kind of food I had in Guatemala (McDonalds most days, beans in some sick sauce with pita bread for breakfast, rice rice rice, etc) I was a tad worried. The prospect of not having a bowl of cereal for 12 months wasn’t a great one. But they do have cereal (and peanut butter; a popular Costa Rican import) and Maria is an amazing cook. She really is. So I’m happy. The neighbourhood is great. Not a lot different to Smithdown Road, Liverpool. You could replace the ever-screaming kids for partying students, the van with a big megaphone that drives past selling fruit each morning at 6am for the late night ‘ice-cream van’ (which we’re pretty sure sells drugs), cockroaches for rats (I’d rather take a cockroach any day) and the 86 bus for my two cheap, not legally-licensed, very friendly taxi drivers; Rodrigo and his son, Rodrigo. However nothing can explain the pick-up truck with a full brass band sat in the back – trumpets, trombones, French horn, cymbals, the lot... – driving up and down our street playing what seemed to be orchestral reggae music the other morning at 5am. That was just weird.
“Pura vida” = good life. The Tico’s love this.
As you probably know I’m volunteering with an organisation called Viva. Check them out... http://www.viva.org/AboutViva.aspx?linkidentifier=id&itemid=242 They’re great! Viva works in partnership with local networks to give vulnerable children a happier, healthier and brighter future, free from deprivation, exploitation and abuse. Some of the partners they work with include Tearfund, Toybox and World Vision. So far I’ve had a few inductions to the current and prospective structuring of the organisation, met all the members of staff at the office and had a good chat with each of them about their roles, and have been studying what’s called ‘QIS’ (Quality Improvement Systems) as this is what I’ll be doing when I get sent out to projects in Bolivia, Peru and Argentina from January. QIS basically involves getting alongside and training street child project managers to improve the running of their project in 6 areas: People care, Financial Accountability, Child Wellbeing, Project Planning and Design, Child Protection and Governance. It’s all about working with the organisations and helping them to improve and strive to achieve the standards set in each category. The big challenge is that most of these project managers are from somewhat under-educated backgrounds. Therefore concepts such as planning, strategy, monitoring and evaluation are all quite alien to them meaning the process of helping and training them can be quite challenging. Between now and December I am writing up a manual for a Project Planning and Design workshop which so far I am enjoying doing and is going well. Everyone at the office is great fun and it’s been quality getting to know them all. Working for Viva I have come to realise more and more how amazing their work is! It is not just impressive, with positive results, but they provide a strategy that works, and one that I believe has the potential to impact globally. Please have a look at their website and see what they’re all about. I really do believe they have a wonderful structure put together that can have long-term effects on actually solving the worldwide crisis of children living on the streets and living lives no way near as abundant as they should be.
I am spending Tuesday and Thursday mornings with a project called ‘Casa Viva’ who partner with Viva. Check them out http://www.casaviva.org/Casa_Viva_Model.asp They’re great too! They seek to provide an alternative to orphanages and children’s homes by encouraging fostering. They believe that these current, popular solutions will not solve orphan crisis and that it is much better for a child to grow up in a family atmosphere, as every child should have the chance to be. So far this has been working to great effect. Casa Viva have been connecting children with Christian families in their home countries. While the child is being raised in a loving environment the biological parents are being taught, counselled and educated by Casa Viva staff with the focus on them learning how relationships should work within a family. The goal is to have the child reintegrated into its biological family when ready. Casa Viva believes that the local Church is God’s first plan for children in need. They therefore invite Churches to develop care ministries that support families who open their doors to children. The Churches commit to recruiting and supporting the families, and they make a financial commitment to help care for the children. In Costa Rica there are an estimated 3,000 street children and an estimated 3,000 Churches. The goal for one country all of a sudden sounds somewhat realistic...
Each day I am taking Spanish classes in the afternoons. It is a 7 week intensive course (and I mean, intense) which will run until the end of November. So far they’ve thrown a lot at us. Classes have varied from studying the three “to be” verbs (why not just one?!) to practicing conversational speaking within the class, such as, “What is this?”... “That is a spoon.” It looks as if the idea is to get taught as many methods as possible, basically to the extent that we get them and then to put them into practice. We won’t all be fluent by the end of the 7 weeks, they tell us that. They say that once you start speaking and practicing it you will slowly start understanding and fitting it together, hopefully so much so that responses such as “that is a spoon” will come more naturally and quicker. So it looks that while I’m out in Bolivia, Peru and Argentina next year with no option but to speak Spanish because of my work, that is when it should really start kicking in, hopefully. As Jorge, my non-English speaking ‘Tico Papa’ says, “When there is a will, there is a way.” Amen. (He also knows all the words, verses and chorus, in English to Ray Evans’ classic, ‘Que Sera, Sera’ – he sees this as a big achievement).
I’ve been learning quite a bit since being here. I’ve been thinking and reading a bit about God’s love, the suffering in our world and where we fit in response to all this. I am reading a book at the moment called ‘The Shack’ (sorry Granny, I’ll return it when I next see you!). It is probably one of the most extraordinary books I have ever read and one which I have learned so much from and will probably read again when I have finished. I definitely recommend it. Without giving too much away... it is a fictional story about a family that go camping for a weekend, during which one of their daughters gets kidnapped and murdered. Mack, the father, many years later gets invited back to the place where the murder occurred for an *insert adjective; it’s hard to describe...* weekend to confront the pain-bearing issues he has about his 6-year-old daughters’ sudden disappearance and murder.
Here is a quote from the book:
God talking to Mack –
“All evil flows from independence, and independence is your choice. If I were to simply revoke all the choices of independence, the world as you know it would cease to exist and love would have no meaning. This world is not a playground where I keep all my children free from evil. Evil is the chaos of this age that you brought to me, but it will not have the final say. Now it touches everyone that I love, those who follow me and those who don’t. If I take away the consequences of people’s choices, I destroy the possibility of love. Love that is forced is no love at all.”
“You demand your independence, but then complain that I actually love you enough to give it to you.”
The book explores deeply complex issues including freedom, reality, relationships, grace, heaven, evil, pain and suffering. I read the quote above last night and it really struck a chord. So often we want God to intervene; to stop this murder, that broken relationship, that car accident, but then on the other side of the coin we want it our own way. We want to be in control and don’t want God to influence our decisions. As a Christian I have seen and experienced God intervening and have witnessed it in other people’s lives by the means of prayer. However God does not follow our every command, he has silences, and we have our independence too which he gave us. Suffering definitely brings about perseverance and makes us stronger. Life is not always just going to be a walk in the park, God didn’t intend it that way.
Knowing and learning these truths has helped have a huge impact on me in the face of the work I am doing. Day by day it is overwhelming to hear stories of children living on the streets in hugely tough conditions, fighting for survival and not having anyone to care for them. In the face of this it is so easy to point the finger at God and blame him, when actually when you look at it we should be thankful to him for giving us independence and not making us robots, allowing us to have the choice to love. We should instead be examining ourselves and the human race for making a complete mess of our world. The great news though is that pain and suffering on this earth is not the end. Despite us messing things up and taking advantage of the independence God has given us he has still stepped in and forgiven us through the sacrifice of his son, Jesus, for all of mankind’s sin. Through this he has made the way for us to be forgiven and to have an eternal relationship with him. All we have to do is believe this message! Good stuff that.
Well that’s it for now. It’s been a fun few weeks. The whole novelty of being here is great and I’m settling in well. It’s hard being away from family, friends, a drumkit, Match of the Day, Basil, Granny’s roasts etc, but I am absolutely loving it and everyone has been so great over here. Would love to hear how all you are doing so feel free to ping me an email. Would be great to stay in touch. Thanks for reading my first blog. Will be blogging again in a few weeks with hopefully a bit more news and stories to tell!
Till then, ciao ciao
X
PS. For photos check out my facebook. Definitely more to come. If you haven't quite made the world of facebook yet, find a friend who has. Or I might upload some on here if I can, will have a look after posting this!
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