Weekend with Brigada Verde

Tuesday March 31, 2009

So I have a lot to write about so we will see how far I get. This past Friday our two groups in training, the environmental group (I’m in this one) and the Information technology group split up. The information technology group went to the city where they are doing their technical training, I think its called el cebo but I’m not positive. Us environmentalists on Friday morning went to the Eastern regional conference of a group called Brigada Verde in the region of San Cristobal, a little to the west and south of Santo Domingo. Brigada Verde is one of the projects that the environmental development program here works with. Basically volunteers try to start and environmental awareness group in their communities (called Brigada Verde) that learn about the environmental issues here in the Dominican Republic as well as participate in community service activities such as trash cleanups at beaches, rivers, or along the roads. This conference had different Brigada Verde groups from the eastern region, and the focus of the conference was on how to run a summer camp in hopes that the groups would be able to start their own camps this upcoming summer.

Us new volunteers showed up at the ranch where the camp was being held, it was like a summer camp type place. When we got there we split up into different groups based upon our Spanish class and set up our “stations”. Half of us were going to set up an “obstacle course” the groups would have to go through before entering the camp that where supposed to encourage group strengthening, and the other half were going to do activities at night with the kids. My group was with the obstacle course so we had to set up quickly when we got there so we would be prepared when the kids arrived. There were I think 8 different stations/activities and each had a volunteer overseeing that station. The first station was to make nametags, the next the group had to use objects to cross a “river of fire” (they couldn’t touch the ground but had a chair, a board and some other objects to stand on to go from one side to the other), the next was a activity where everyone got in a circle and grabbed the hands of someone else in the circle (not next to them) and then had to untangle themselves without letting go so the persons whose hands each one was grapping was on either side of them. The fourth station, which I was at, we divided the group in two teams and one person on each team had a blindfold on, and their teammates had to take turns giving the blind folded person directions to find an object I had put on the ground. Next they did a jigsaw puzzle of the different regions of the Dominican Republic, after that they had to do a relay race where they ran to a stick, had to spin around it 8 times, and then try to run back to tag their teammate and they repeated until everyone had finished. The last activity was a drawing game where someone drew a picture then covered most of it, then someone else had to expand on the part that was uncovered then cover their drawing except for a little part, and so on until at the end there was a non-sensical drawing made up of 4 or 5 different little drawings. All of the games we tried to teach a lesson or have elements of group strengthening. So for example, in my activity, when it was over, I would talk about how sometimes we have to rely on others, our teammates, in order to obtain a goal. The person who was blindfolded had to have confianza (trust) in his/her teammates to not run him into a tree or other obstacles along the way, and the people giving directions had to be clear and concise or else their teammate would end up moving farther away from the ultimate goal: the object. But we had to do all of these activities in Spanish so this also helped with our language and was just a lot of fun because we would do these activities along with the kids. It was also a way to give examples of activities they could implement themselves if they were to start their own summer camp, as this was the overall theme of the conference.

After everyone had gone through the obstacle course we all ate lunch and afterwords everyone went to one of the pavilions where we had a couple presentations from volunteers and our technical trainer about how to funding for summer camps, issues that can be addressed, group strengthening techniques, how to recruit members for a Brigada Verde group and so on. By the time we had gone through all of the presentations it was time for dinner so we all ate and after dinner the other groups who hadn’t done the activities earlier split up the kids and did their activities with them.


The next day we had more presentations throughout the day, but also had a little bit of time to hang out and play with the kids. In the afternoon some of the volunteers and some of the kids got a game of ultimate Frisbee going which was a lot of fun. I also gave a presentation to the volunteers (we all have to do one about one subject or another and present it to each other) about interpretation. Basically it was supposed to teach techniques on how to interpret trails and other things for such activities as eco-tourism and I was able to used examples of when I volunteered at the museum of natural history at UF to explain how I interpreted exhibits and tried to keep the kids interested. Later that night there was a bonfire that everyone went to and where we made smores. We also were playing music together and singing as some of the kids from the youth group had brought some drums and other instruments and had a little meringue/borchata band going on and I had brought my guitar along. It was a lot of fun and another great way to interact with all of the kids who had come to the camp.

The next day we left before noon to head back to Santo Domingo but stopped by the beach for a little bit before returning back home. I was really excited to see the beach since I hadn’t been there since I arrived. It was super pretty and a relaxing activity to do before returning to the big city. On returning to the city I ate lunch at my house and hung out a little bit with my friends before I had to go back home to back because on Monday we left Santo Domingo to go a little town called La Cumbre where we are going to be living for 4 weeks for our technical training. I left early Monday morning and arrived here in La Cumbre for lunch with my new host family. They are super nice and I think I’ll like it here better than Santo Domingo because it is a super pretty town up in the mountains and is much smaller with much less noise and hustle and bustle. But I will write more later this week. Oh and I got a camara last week so hopefully I’ll be able to put up some pictures soon. Hasta luego.