...well in the process of improvement at least.
If you read my previous post you now know about some of the positive and negative aspects of my school, I think its time for me to describe exactly what I will be doing at the school and in my community. Nope, sorry still too early for that. However, I can definitely fill you in a bit on what I have already done and what some of my ideas for the future are. As I'm sure I have already mentioned at some point, Sonia, had been working on recycling. She started a recycling program at the school and she achieved great success. She hosted recycling days every 2 weeks. On these recycling days students would carry to school all the recycling items from home, such as plastic bottles, aluminum cans, paper, tetrapak (juice/milk cartons) card board and batteries. Why carry all of this to school down those super long muddy roads? you may ask. Well because their is no trash management in small towns in Panama. Really there is no trash management system in most of Panama, besides a few of the larges cities. So what happens with the trash? It gets burned. And when it gets burned all the community members breathe in all the toxic chemicals that get released into the air with the smoke. So... recycling.... pretty significant here. Crucial actually to their long term health. All the recycling items are counted and separated accordingly, and then packed up into big trash bags. A day or two later a man from a super helpful and recycling center comes down to Membrillo, we pack all of the bags into the truck and go with him to the recycling center and to weigh it and receive some money for it that we then splurge and buy all the things that we cant find in out community! Just kidding. We use about a dollar each to get back to site, and save the rest of the money to fund future projects, activities and to buy the trash bags and pizza. Yes, Pizza. The class that recycles most wins 2 pizzas from Dominos and a soda. And they love it!
If you read my previous post you now know about some of the positive and negative aspects of my school, I think its time for me to describe exactly what I will be doing at the school and in my community. Nope, sorry still too early for that. However, I can definitely fill you in a bit on what I have already done and what some of my ideas for the future are. As I'm sure I have already mentioned at some point, Sonia, had been working on recycling. She started a recycling program at the school and she achieved great success. She hosted recycling days every 2 weeks. On these recycling days students would carry to school all the recycling items from home, such as plastic bottles, aluminum cans, paper, tetrapak (juice/milk cartons) card board and batteries. Why carry all of this to school down those super long muddy roads? you may ask. Well because their is no trash management in small towns in Panama. Really there is no trash management system in most of Panama, besides a few of the larges cities. So what happens with the trash? It gets burned. And when it gets burned all the community members breathe in all the toxic chemicals that get released into the air with the smoke. So... recycling.... pretty significant here. Crucial actually to their long term health. All the recycling items are counted and separated accordingly, and then packed up into big trash bags. A day or two later a man from a super helpful and recycling center comes down to Membrillo, we pack all of the bags into the truck and go with him to the recycling center and to weigh it and receive some money for it that we then splurge and buy all the things that we cant find in out community! Just kidding. We use about a dollar each to get back to site, and save the rest of the money to fund future projects, activities and to buy the trash bags and pizza. Yes, Pizza. The class that recycles most wins 2 pizzas from Dominos and a soda. And they love it!
So to sum up, Membrillo rocks at recycling! However, as always there is room for improvement.
That second month, I also had a meeting with the entire recycling committee, and the teacher that is in charge of it in addition to Sara who is the president. We discussed whether we will continue with recycling now that Sonia is leaving. Of course I will continue! During this meeting I also introduced some minor changes that I was thinking about. Receiving a consensus from the committee I have gone ahead and implemented them. One such change, although minor, was the fact that every pound of paper counted as only one point. So a second grader would walk all the way to school with a 10 lb bag of paper and only receive 10 points for it. Considering the fact that another child could bring in a 10 lb bag of cans (which is probably about 200 cans) and would receive 200 points for it, it didn't seem very fair. So in order to encourage kids to bring the paper to school so that it could be recycled, we will now be awarding 5 points per pound. An improvement I think.
I have also implemented the use of a different kind of trash bags that Sara had discovered. I know, sounds like a very small change. But Now I am buying the same quantity of bags for only $17.50 instead of the $100+ that was aid before. That $80 or more saved every month will quickly add up and provide us with funds to possibly construct something at the school or take the children on an educational field trip. Both of which these students really deserve!
I have also spoken with the owners of the Recycling Center and have arranged that we receive a higher price per pound of cans. SO to give a bit of background. Aluminum cans are really the only things that we get paid a significant amount for. Normally the Recycling Center pays people 50 cents per pound. However since they provide the transportation for free, they reduced the price of cans to 28 cents. Recycling used to be picked up every 2 weeks. After every recycling day. But the truck is so big that there is plenty of space for two rounds of recycling. So now it will only get picked up once a month. Since now they will have to waste less time and gas for transportation, I convinced them to raise the price to 35 cents. A whole 7 cents more! Success! Haha. No, but seriously, since we have at least 100 pounds of cans every round that's another $7. That will add up too! More funds for great projects at the school!
One major problem that we have with recycling is that the students in the afternoon classes (7th to 9th grade) do not want to recycle. They have "pena". Or in other words are embarrassed. Sonia also encountered this problem. So to get the kids a little more enthusiastic and involved I have created a group of Recycling Representatives. Each class has at least two representatives. Their role is to remind their classmates to recycle and to motivate them. We had our first meeting and we discussed our goals, reasons why students don't want to recycle and how we can combat them. As always when it comes to public speaking these students were very shy and it took a lot of effort to get any one of them to say more then one word. Nut no worries I already have fun leadership activities planned for next months meeting. It is so important that these students become more comfortable with public speaking and obtain more leadership skills. After this meeting with the,, the next recycling day that we had, there were students that participated from each class! This is the first time that this has happened in at least 4 months! Once again success! Of course only a few students participated from each class. Most likely the representatives themselves, but nonetheless it is progress. And little by little as they serve as an example, I think we will get more students to participate.
I have also spoken with the owners of the Recycling Center and have arranged that we receive a higher price per pound of cans. SO to give a bit of background. Aluminum cans are really the only things that we get paid a significant amount for. Normally the Recycling Center pays people 50 cents per pound. However since they provide the transportation for free, they reduced the price of cans to 28 cents. Recycling used to be picked up every 2 weeks. After every recycling day. But the truck is so big that there is plenty of space for two rounds of recycling. So now it will only get picked up once a month. Since now they will have to waste less time and gas for transportation, I convinced them to raise the price to 35 cents. A whole 7 cents more! Success! Haha. No, but seriously, since we have at least 100 pounds of cans every round that's another $7. That will add up too! More funds for great projects at the school!
One major problem that we have with recycling is that the students in the afternoon classes (7th to 9th grade) do not want to recycle. They have "pena". Or in other words are embarrassed. Sonia also encountered this problem. So to get the kids a little more enthusiastic and involved I have created a group of Recycling Representatives. Each class has at least two representatives. Their role is to remind their classmates to recycle and to motivate them. We had our first meeting and we discussed our goals, reasons why students don't want to recycle and how we can combat them. As always when it comes to public speaking these students were very shy and it took a lot of effort to get any one of them to say more then one word. Nut no worries I already have fun leadership activities planned for next months meeting. It is so important that these students become more comfortable with public speaking and obtain more leadership skills. After this meeting with the,, the next recycling day that we had, there were students that participated from each class! This is the first time that this has happened in at least 4 months! Once again success! Of course only a few students participated from each class. Most likely the representatives themselves, but nonetheless it is progress. And little by little as they serve as an example, I think we will get more students to participate.
So my first day of recycling solo, without Sonia was a success, we recycled twice as much as the week before! I will check the exactly quantity and post it in the future! But it is at least a few 100 pounds! For a community of 3000 people, that is success.
I will definitely have to get used to counting and sorting so many bottles cans and cartons! Whew! These are the days I use sunscreen on! Many hours in the sun! But at the end of the day when I take a look at all these bags ready to go to the recycling center, I always feel lucky to have received such a wonderful and cooperative community. Bien hecho mi comunidad! Well done my community! Well done!
Also I participated in a parade for Natural Resource Month with some of the students and teachers from my school. I made this awesome banner to represent our school. And guess what its made of!? Yes recycled materials. Chip bags to be exact. Collecting washing, cutting, and gluing all of those letters.... more work then it looks like. But now we have this great banner, so it was well worth it! Lets just hope that with this Panamanian humidity all the letters don't unglue!
Anyways, tomorrow is my BIG COMMUNITY ANALYSIS MEETING! Yes caps was necessary. My Director is coming, and all these agencies personnel are coming, almost people from the main television station here were going to come. But I said no, because I wanted my community members to be comfortable with expressing their opinions and not preoccupied with television. This meeting is a defining moment during my service, because it is during this meeting that we will all decide together what projects I will work on! SO be on the lookout for my next post to see how it goes. And do some anti rain dances for me, so that it doesn't pour during my meeting (It rains here every every every single day now) Lets just hope the rain holds off until after 3pm.
Hasta pronto!
Karolina
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