Semillas de Amor: Stephanie's last post

I have been rushing around finishing up things here at the foundation, I can’t believe I just have a week left, I feel like I have so much more to give to the community of Turbaco. Cookie has been running around like crazy people tying up all the loose ends with construction stuff, he’s been my best buddy this past week,  productive buddies!

The gardens are starting to produce and I’m sad that I won’t be here to see more but this week we will be picking all the cucumbers and will be making a salad for lunch. That will be fun.

Finishing up here is quite bitter/ sweet. The bitter- so sad to leave these amazing people who have taught be so much in the three months that I have been here and who have been so hospitable to me. The feeling like I need to stay and do more is also quite bitter. The sweet- I will go back get my MSW and be able to do more for communities like Turbaco , this experience has really helped me open my eyes to what I want to do in the future and I am excited to get started with it all. 

ECH is so grateful for Stephanie and other interns like her who have given so much of their time to children and communities in need! Learn more about becoming an intern here.

Semillas de Amor: Meet Nacer

Stephanie, at Semillas de Amor introduces us to Nacer:

We have had a particular student who I am excited about and I really believe if he is given the right opportunity he could really excel. He comes without fail every day and is eager to get involved and help with everything that is going on the foundation. His name is Nacer (nea-ker), he is about ten years old. There is a painting on the wall of the foundation with a few different important people who have been involved in the foundation, Nacer is in that painting. He is not only the first one to walk in the doors every day and pick up a broom to start cleaning but also during the activities he is more often than not  the one raising his hand to tell me the answers which I am asking for. I believe that Nacer has taken ownership in his growth and the growth of the foundation because he has been involved from the beginning and in my time here we allowed Nacer to make some small decisions and by doing this it has just increased his involvement and passion for the foundation. I would love to see Necer in a leadership position in the foundation to help develop those skills that he has been showing but even more then that I would love the foundation to give back to Nacer the dedication he has given. My wish is to help him continue to secondary schools and eventually college.  If Nacer continues to have people who believe in him and resources to go to college I believe he could break the trend of generational poverty his family has seen in their day. 

Semillas de Amor: One of those weeks

Update from Stephanie at Semillas de Amor:

November 17

This week has been interesting with a number of set backs some personal and some dealing with the foundation. At the beginning of the week Uris informed me that the hotel that donates food to us every week was not able to come through this week and because of low funding we were not going to be able to get food from the food bank either. It´s a good thing my mom received a donation from a friend this past week that she is going to bring when she comes down to Colombia to visit me in two weeks. So I used my money to buy food this week and she will reimburse me when she comes.  Happy to be feeding the kids this week. I also bought paint to paint the new door and fences we put in. Cookie and I spent 5 hours stripping the bark off the sticks we used for the fences, we are no where near being done. Looks like this job will be taking me all week. Lesson learned strip bark before making a fence.

I have a few girls and myself who will be teaching handicraft making with the women this coming week. Its all planned out and im really excited I have been looking up different crafts online. This is something the women have expressed that they want to do. They want to learn how to make a number of different things so they can sell them and make money for there family. Hope all goes as planned.

Semillas de Amor: Halloween/Festival de Novembre

Halloween/Festival de Novembre festivities with Stephanie at Semillas de Amor:

I have been telling the kids all October that we will be having a Halloween party, we had to delay it a week to get more supplies from the food bank. They donated cakes, decorations, soda, treats,  and a few cute little costumes for the kids. HUGE thanks to Banco Alimentos for providing us the supplies to make our celebration happen.

We told all the kids if they had costumes to bring them and wear them. NONE of the kids had any sort of costume, but I should have guessed that. Instead all the kids came freshly showered with freshly washed clothes they all looked so great and I could tell they all felt great too.

We Sang, danced, played games, held competitions for prizes, and then ate lunch and of course the Halloween cake. It was not only fun for the kids but it was really fun for us adults as well. It was perfect timing because the second week of November is a week long holiday and keeping the kids in a more controlled area while the craziness goes on in the streets was a safer environment for them.

Time has just slipped out of my grip, I only have three and a half weeks left. Sad Face. I feel like I have so much more to do for Turbaco and for the community I’m working with and though I have seen change I feel like I need more time for big change to happen. I think I will probably have this feeling of needing to do more in my future life as a social worker. Helping  to plant the seeds but can’t hang around long enough  to see them all grow.

I extended one of the gardens a few weeks ago (on one of my 50-60 hour work week)and I planted more veggies. This week after coming back from my little trip the new plants had perked up and they are all doing really well. I’m very excited to see peppers growing . Wahoo I actual get to see veggies before I leave.

I received a person donation from a family friend this past week and I will be purchasing supplies to make handy crafts with the women this week. I will also buy paint for the new fences, and doors we put in as well hopefully the front of the building (I enjoy painting so that’s why I’m putting some money aside for that).

Semillas de Amor: Lots of work!

An update from Stephanie at Semillas de Amor:

It’s been a really good week for creatively constructing needed parts of the foundation.  A lot of the things we did this week was from found materials, donated materials, or had money donated to buy materials. We have been really excited about all the stuff we have be able to accomplish.  A HUGE thanks to our friend Chanp who decided to stay another week and keep helping.

Recent Projects:

·       Ripped down the fence in the front of the foundation and replaced with a more open fence made from stick we found in the street and in the foundation (This Was the biggest project of the week)

·       Extended one of the gardens and rebuild the fence around it to be stronger and make the garden more accessible. Planted more vegetables with the kids.

·       Made a small fence for the smaller garden, plus a swivel door to enter the garden, its now much easier to get to either of the gardens.

·       We took down the old door leading into the foundation and put in door we made that is a hundred times better.  We are buying a lot to put on it tomorrow.

·       Cleaned out a massive pile of old dying plants and trees that were attracting bugs and possibly dangerous snakes

·       Cleaned out lots of glass (an entire bucket full)

·       Built of some of the walls with the small amount of funding we got from friends and family.

·      

     Pick axed rock to fill in flooring

·       Made a lock on the door to keep kids in during class

·       Chopping down the tree in the area where the kitchen will be going (Proved myself as a strong woman and did most of it with a machete )

     Weeding the gardens

·       Set up meetings with women to get surveys filled out

·       Taught daily lessons,  served lunch

·       Taught kids about throwing trash in the trash can rather than the ground.

·       Created a Compost

A lot has happened over the past week. One of the days  more kids showed up then I have ever seen, I think it’s because all the stuff that has been happening at the foundation .  The kids just kept walking in the door, we usually have more food then we need, and by the time we feed them all there wasn’t enough food for us interns to eat (which was fine).  A lot of the kids really want to get involved in helping with anything we are doing with the foundation, and I have been super impresses with the skills some of these kids have.

One thing that happened this week that was quite heart breaking was a little girl showed up to the foundation, she had no shoes, no underwear, reeked of urine, and was crying. She had a huge sore on the bottom of her foot, she has cut herself but because she had no shoes it just stayed dirty and infected. As soon as we saw it we cleaned it bandaged it and chanp made her a little temporary shoe out of material he had.  Turbaco is not the place to run around with no shoes, there is trash and broken glass EVERYWHERE just in the foundation today I collected an entire bucket of potentially dangerous trash; broken glass, rusted old sharp cans, and barb wire. I am excited for all the shoes to come in December, just wish there were coming soon so other incidences like this didn’t happen.

Semillas de Amor: Stephanie Oct 17

The following is a post from Stephanie, an intern at Semillas de Amor:

October 17

Just like everything else in life we had a few hiccups last week that prevented us from meeting with the mothers of the foundation and the gardens that were supposed to be started didn’t happen.  This week has already been very productive on the other hand, we have a friend who decided to come and help for the week. It’s really nice to have someone with a pair of new eyes and fresh ideas. We were able to get a really nice looking fence up around the garden giving us way more room to plant and more room to move around. I was able to get a few donations that amounted to 60 dollars. We were able to buy a bag and a half of cement, 50 cinder blocks, and some sand.  We will be able to do construction for a few days with all the material we got. Because of the holiday on Monday we were not able to go to Banco Alimentos (the food bank), So the food had to be picked up yesterday (Tuesday) since that was happening while preparation of the food was supposed to happen lunch couldn’t be served so while we were working up at the foundation and ran and just grabbed some bread for whatever kids showed up.  Quite a few came in and out but there was a handful who really wanted to help. One of our students Neicer who is very punctual came earlier than any of the other kids and worked a long side us the entire time. He was so happy and excited to help us and was quite good at mixing cement, weeding the garden, digging up roots of unwanted tree. I think when people of community get involved with the work that’s being done and put their two cents in they take more ownership over the project. Neicer has obviously been involved in the development of the foundation, he has even been included in the paintings on the walls from previous volunteers.  It seems to me that because Neicer has always been involved with the development, he now is the only that comes every single day and he’s the one who  putting up the chairs and sweeping at the end of the activity.

Thursday we are meeting with the mothers of the family to teach them about planting a garden. Oh ya! And we got our first pepper in the garden!! Wahoo!