achievement

Over ten days, from July 9 to 18, Amigos invited fifteen local Paraguayan youth volunteers to stay in a few Amigos volunteer towns and collaborate on their projects. The youth were nominated through an international organization called Junior Achievement, which teaches entrepreneurship and community development. I supervised three of these volunteers – two girls (Lilian and Fatima) were placed in San José Obrero along with Daisy and Alex, and another boy (Salomon) joined up with Ari and Drew in Las Mercedes.

(Salomon is the one making the 'hang loose' sign in the back left)

During their orientation, two returning Junior Achievement volunteers told the rest of the group a bit about their experience the previous year. Both had an “espectaculár” time which, no doubt, was the reason they were returning. They described construction projects, mural painting, and the kindly community members who worked with them. I was impressed, and actually a bit intimidated – I was going to have to put together something super cool for my Junior Achievement volunteers to do, and quickly.

On the 9^th, I sat down with Lilian, Fatima, and Salomon once we had arrived in Alfonso Tranquera and provided them with some ideas on some activities they could coordinate during their 10-day project. I suggested running a winter vacation camp (the students in Paraguay had their winter recess from July 9 through the 20^th), planning a fundraiser, setting up community meetings to plan a CBI (community-based initiative, or mini-project), and tracking the latrines – all in cooperation with the Amigos volunteers, of course. I thought I had given them some good stuff to run with; I introduced Lilian and Fatima to their host families and set off on the 5km walk to Las Mercedes with Salomon, then continued on route to Jhugua Guazú and Mariscal Estigarríbia.

When I checked in with Lilian and Fatima later in the week, I was met with shoulder-shrugging and no news of any project progress. With a little butt-kicking, Mercedes Willamayor and I got the girls to go out and invite people to a community meeting, but there was something about their attitude that annoyed me. They were only here for 10 days, why weren’t they doing anything?

I saw Salomon and the boys that Friday, and they had good news – they had started up the camp and they had a few faithful kids coming every day. The previous day they had run a contest to see which group of children could pick up the most trash around the school and the church. Unfortunately, the winners were rewarded with candy which they immediately unwrapped, threw the wrappers on the ground and ran off to play. The following day, the only kids at camp were young relatives of the boys’ host family.

Late in the first week, the construction materials for the latrines finally arrived in my volunteers’ communities, so all the volunteers had another task on their plate. I went back to Asunción hopeful that the girls would run their community meeting over the weekend, and the boys would be able to get their hands dirty and lay some brick.

When I saw the girls on Monday, they informed me that they had tried to run the meeting twice, and hardly anyone who said they were going to come actually showed. The weather had been cold over the weekend, and folks often do not leave their houses when the temperature drops. On Tuesday night, I met with a very frustrated Salomon. It was his last night in the community and he was leaving things the same way he had found them. No one was allowing the boys to help construct the brick houses, the committee leader who had hoped the boys would build a playground for the community had been out of town for nearly a week and the project never got off the ground, and the kids camp attendance had diminished every day as opposed to growing. All three of my Junior Achievement volunteers’ experiences were far from “espectaculár”; I felt terrible.

The following day we brought the volunteers to Itauguá for a morning of de-briefing. Claudia, the Junior Achievement program coordinator, started out by asking the kids to shout out what they thought they learned from the experience as she jotted down their thoughts on poster board. At first, everyone sounded like they’d had a great time – “community organizing”, “working as a group”, “living with a new family”, “lesson planning” were some of the things they mentioned. When the voices died down, Claudia asked another question: did anyone learn any tough lessons over these last ten days? Did anyone learn first-hand that things don’t always turn out the way you had hoped? Didn’t anyone feel frustrated? Some of the students who had been quieter at the beginning (including Salomon, Lilian, and Fatima) nodded emphatically. Claudia added “frustration” to the poster board.

Ten days is almost no-time. And in the long run, two months really isn’t much either. One of the toughest lessons the volunteers will learn first-hand this summer is that organization has to come from within. In communities where the people are already organized, volunteers have found strong support for their small projects and great ideas for new projects that are truly feasible. The energy feeds off itself and the volunteers have been having a wonderful, and totally productive seven weeks.

In other towns, though – like Las Mercedes and Barrio Libertad – the only thing the volunteers can really do is plant a seed of energy, provide some ideas and some tools for running community projects, and take their leave. There’s nothing more difficult that working your hardest on a cool project, knowing all along that the initiative is entirely unsustainable. But if you let that tiny bit of frustration and doubt enter into your thoughts it can ultimately bring a whole community down with it. What matters is whether there are people who will follow your example; these are the people who will ultimately organize the community in your absence.

I think Salomon, Fatima, and Lilian got something out of that seminar last Wednesday, and I hope they keep hanging in there. Fortunately, they live here and they will be working in Paraguay as adults. The seed is in their hands and they have the power to keep planting it.