Today was the first day of the Omprakash Cross-Cultural
Education Conference and I just wanted to write a quick note about incredible
it has been. It’s already 11pm (and Portrero usually goes to bed around 9pm!)
but I wanted to get some initial thoughts down before I head to bed. Forgive my unedited ramblings tonight.
Just within the first day, I have learned so much from
talking to other volunteers and organizations around the world and sharing what
I do with others. There are people representing Peru, Argentina, Costa Rica,
and India in addition to others and I feel really lucky to be volunteering with
Abriendo Mentes this summer so that I could also attend this conference.
We started out the day with a presentation from Willy from
Omprakash and we also got to Skype with him. He told us a little bit about what
he is hoping comes from this conference and that it’s really a place for us to
share with each other our experiences with international volunteering and how
to make it most beneficial for the volunteers and the community abroad. It’s
too bad he couldn’t be here in person, but Lacey from Omprakash is here and it
has been really great to get to know more about Omprakash through her. Although
I have a lot of work to do when I get home, I am genuinely excited about
it since it involves doing presentations
about my experience at Abriendo Mentes and with Omprakash with the hope that
more people from my home community get involved.
The topics today ranged from learning about a laundry
cooperative run by youth from the barrios in Argentina to using personal
narratives to teaching English and literacy skills to teambuilding games. All
in all, it was a really great day of information. In addition to hearing great
presentations on those topics, I’ve enjoyed getting to know the conference
participants. Through conversations with
Lacey this week, I feel like I’ve come to understand that Omprakash vision
better and how it is really focused on building relationships between
volunteers and partners, volunteers and volunteers, and partners and partners,
etc. This conference couldn’t be a better way to do that. I’ve met a traveling
librarian who takes books to India and a man from England who builds schools
out of plastic bottles in Guatemala. There are also videographers recording the
whole conference from the Canary Islands and London. Because most of the
volunteers at Abriendo Mentes are from the United States right now, it has been
especially refreshing to hear from people all over the world with common goals
and experiences to share with each other.
I am presenting on volunteer preparation tomorrow and I’m
really excited about it. After talking to a few volunteers about what they
would have liked to know before coming to Abriendo Mentes and considering what
I teach to my own students in the Overseas Project (program that prepares
student teachers to go abroad to teach), I feel like we can really have a good
conversation about what type of preparation is needed. It’s not good for the
volunteer or the organization if one or the other doesn’t have an understanding
of cross-cultural differences and interactions. My goal is to open up a
discussion tomorrow about this topic and hopefully continue to brainstorm ideas
throughout the week and beyond.
Well, it’s bedtime for me. Everyone who is visiting has
raved about the beaches and I truly don’t get to go there enough (there’s so
much work to be done!) so I’m going to do a 6am swim with people tomorrow
before the conference begins.
What an incredible day it has been. I can’t wait to see how
the other days of the conference go.
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