Yo amo a la tierra: Recycling with kids in Guatemala
- Karina Copen & Rachel Abileah

"Yo amo a la tierra…por eso pongo la basura en su lugar! (I love the Earth … so I put trash in its place!)" sings the chorus of children echoing though the valley below Agua Volcano as a day filled with events about ecology draws to a close.

The second weekend of July was not ordinary for San Pedro las Huertas, a village on the outskirts of Antigua, Guatemala, thanks to bonds created through FSSCA's Culture, Spirituality, and Theology of Peace Project. Over four hundred children came together to learn about the importance of protecting the environment. They participated in a variety of interactive workshops, the painting new garbage cans, and finally a garbage pick-up in their village. The event was a collaborative effort between Familias de Esperanza, a non-profit providing education, health, and development to low-income families (www.commonhope.org) and ILUGUA, a Lutheran church group based in Zacapa. These two groups met in January of this year at the Culture of Peace Conference, sponsored by the FSSCA. They decided to link their organizations and the vision of the Culture of Peace by having young people work together to bring an environmental message to their communities.

Ana Liseth, helping to clean up her neighborhood.

Children arrived at the San Pedro elementary school on Saturday morning to participate in a two-hour workshop that opened with a dance and song: "The earth is my body, water is my blood, air is my food, and fire is my spirit!" Students split into four groups to compare hand-drawn pictures of polluted and beautiful towns and learn songs and games relating to respect for the Earth.

The afternoon commenced with a citywide trash pick-up that, despite the hot sun beating down, was beaming with energy as kids from 6 to 14 years old rushed through the streets to fill huge trash bags. The rest of the group prepared large garbage cans by sanding them down and adding a coat of white paint! These cans were then painted on Sunday with bright colors and pictures. These beautiful, colorful creations are designed inspire ownership and confidence in the young people and encourage them and their families to utilize them to protect the environment and keep their town clean.

The organizers of the July cleanup in San Pedro Las Huertas, Guatemala. They say that this will be the first of many such youth activities in their communities.

Sunday ended with a full-blown Guatemalan fiesta complete with a big red piñata, a juggling clown, and a raffle featuring prizes donated by local clothing and toy stores. This event marked this town's the first efforts towards environmental action. The youth group plans to bring a similar event to Zacapa, in Eastern Guatemala. It also demonstrates the spread of the Mesoamerican Culture of Peace movement, and the implementation of the visions and ideas it has generated throughout the region. More importantly, the seeds of peace are being planted in the youth, who will inherit the planet, the future, and who know how to have a genuinely good time simply being the peace.

Joining in, in San Hilario by Taryn Williams

San Hilario, a community of about 70 families in the Bajo Lempa region of southeastern El Salvador, is very different from Tempe, Arizona, where I live. San Hilario is about 30 minutes by pick-up truck from the nearest paved road. In Tempe, most 16-yr-olds have a car waiting for them when they get their driver's license. In San Hilario, kids can't go to school in the afternoon until they've worked for a few hours in the cornfield, or taken the cows to pasture, or washed the family's clothes, or made tortillas. Kids in Tempe go to school eight hours a day, and then they get to go to basketball practice or a music lesson. The houses in San Hilario don't have plumbing, or more than one bedroom, or air conditioning. Most houses in Tempe have walk-in closets, DVD players, and swimming pools.

Taryn (left) with fellow volunteer Nicole.

Given all these differences, I expected that the kids in the youth group in San Hilario that I came to work with for two months this summer would also be very different from teenagers I know in the U.S. I was assigned by La Coordinadora to help get the youth group in San Hilario really up and running, so the kids would continue to plan activities and projects after I left, and be an example to motivate kids in other communities to organize groups as well.

My expectations were off the mark. The enthusiasm, conflicts, romantic crushes, rivalries, and antics that characterize any group of American teenagers were on display everyday in San Hilario. Our first major project was to rehearse for a performance. We were invited by the preschool in town to provide entertainment at the crowning of this year's baby beauty queen. Taking our gig seriously, we rehearsed everyday for three weeks in two of the houses in town that had a CD player. The kids choreographed dances, lip synching numbers and skits, going through them again and again despite the heat that turned me, the non-acclimated American, into a sweaty mess every afternoon. I was in two dances, and while our audience the day of the performance seemed to get a kick out of seeing the new arrival in town making a fool of herself, the overwhelming crowd favorite of the afternoon was a number featuring several teenage boys sporting wigs, pantyhose, and tight, sparkly dresses!

On the weekends, we planned a bunch of field trips. My favorite was to Cuche de Monte, an estuary off the Bay of Jiquilísco, which was perfect for swimming. We got up early in the morning, made a bunch of tortillas and packed up beans and cheese for our picnic, then set off. It was a two-hour walk from San Hilario to the water, and we had to cross some mosquito-infested swamps, but everybody was too excited to mind. Spending an entire day in the water and out of the heat was a real treat, and the kids were thrilled, standing on each other's shoulders to make human pyramids that came splashing down, diving off a tree branch into a deep pool, and sneaking up on me every time I tried to float on my back! After lunch, which also included the crabs that we dug up, we played some games, and talked about the day. With no help from adults, or funds, or fancy swimsuits, or transportation, they had arranged a terrific trip, and I think the good mood as we sang and joked on the walk back home was not just because of the fun we had, but the sense of pride they had in themselves.

Some of our activities were a little more serious. Some members of the group and I went several times to workshops at the office of La Coordinadora in Ciudad Romero, another community about 40 minutes from our town. The Coordinadora's Culture of Peace Team ran the workshops to help build leadership skills in the kids and give them an opportunity to meet other groups and learn about things they were doing. The last workshop the week before I left was held in San Hilario, and kids from nearby communities came to ours. The theme for the day was "the family" and after a few warm-up games we went around the circle sharing about our family situation. Teenagers in El Salvador love to dance and joke and goof off like American kids, but they are also scared and sad and confused like American kids. One girl talked about how she was closer to her mom than her dad, because he came home drunk at night, and yelled at her more than at her brother and sister, and she didn't know why. Another said she was generally happy at home, living with her two sisters and cousin and grandparents, but she missed her parents, who had left years before to find work in New York. She knew life was hard for them there, now that they had to take care of her new baby brother, whom she had never met.

So looking back, I guess I can't decide if the kids in San Hilario were really similar to kids in Tempe, or really different. Like any group of kids in the U.S. they want to goof off, dance, make friends, make their parents proud of them, fall in love, and see new things. But unlike kids here, their parents can't give them as much as they would like. Many parents don't even get to see their children, because as illegal immigrants in the big cities of the U.S., travel is nearly impossible. Unlike kids here, hard daily labor interferes with getting an education, and poverty makes any schooling after ninth grade prohibitively expensive. Life depends for these kids on taking over the family plot of corn or chiles, and staying at home to raise the next generation and make tortillas.

Though their futures are without many of the choices that we often take for granted in this country, after my two wonderful months in San Hilario, I know these kids will harness the creativity they showed in their songs and dances to create new opportunities for their communities, and use the initiative they demonstrated in planning trips to initiate new development in their country. They will meet those futures with courage and grace and enthusiasm.

Taryn with students in her English class.

SPECIAL THANKS

The solidarity of many generous individuals and organizations is making this work for peace and self-sufficiency possible. Outstanding donor organizations during the last few months include:

Altrusa International of Olympia Foundation American Jewish World Service
J.M. Kaplan Fund Copen Family Fund
Seattle Prep Latin America Club Komachin Middle School Students
Austin Kiwanis Club Sound Testing Inc.
St. Michael's Parish & School, Olympia, WA The Jewish Community Foundation
FJC Communitas
Fund for Transition
We are also thankful for gifts made in honor of:
Margaret Warren Brown, Sabina Quinteros,
and the marriage of Dorothy Richman & Michael Steinman

Planting the seeds of change in Panama

The Culture, Spirituality, and Theology of Peace Project is helping us to identify local successes in promoting positive principles and values. One part of this work is sharing experiences so others can use them in their own communities.

Maria Ester de Camagro is a mother and teacher from Panama. During our Peace Institute in July, she told us that she has a little school in her house for children aged 2 to 5 that she runs with other mothers. Within the curriculum are lessons for the children about the relationship between the earth, trees, and life. The way they teach this is very important. A parent prepares the earth for sowing. Then the mothers explain to the children how the earth is full of life and how it can produce new lives. Together with the children, they open the soil while they explain how it is a crib where they place seeds to sleep. When the seed wakes up, several days later, it is a little tree. Finally, the child should give the new tree its own name and take care of it, because it is her little sister. They end by explaining to the child that this is a process of life created by God, which they should thank Him for.

Thus, Maria helps children make the very important connection of connecting their principles and values, their faith, to the way they live and their relationship with the earth. On the back page of this newsletter, you'll read about how youths in Guatemala are applying the stories, lessons, and methodology of the Culture, Spirituality, and Theology of Peace in their own communities.

Isaias, from Tierra Blanca, El Salvador, participates in a Coordinadora art class. Through this project, dozens of kids like him are channeling their energy into creative activities instead of drugs and alcohol.

Foundation for Self-Sufficiency in Central America Newsletter, Fall/Winter 2003

The Foundation for Self-Sufficiency in Central America is a US non-profit organization (501c3) dedicated to supporting the movement for Peace and Justice in El Salvador and the rest of Central America.