But back to reality....This is our last week in Isla Mujeres and we are wishing we had more time here. We have finally managed to get a good group of kids together that are interested in staying involved with Brazos and forming a TEAMM here in the future. We had a really good meeting yesterday evening and the four girls from last week all came again and they brought two more girls with them as well. The girls that came last week filled in the new girls about what the purpose of TEAMM is and how the organization works.
I wrote about TEAMM a little bit in previous posts but I feel like I should elaborate a little bit more. TEAMM is a part of Brazos Abiertos and is composed of young people ranging in age anywhere from 16-27. These young people are volunteer youth educators who's mission is to educate other young people about sexual and reproductive health. This education takes place through peer to peer education, in other words: young people educating young people. The members of TEAMM organize and carry out workshops, community fairs, and other types of health campaigns that focus on reproductive and sexual health, such as prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, family planning and birth control, and sexual and reproductive rights. Right now there are TEAMM members in the United States(these members are called TEAMM US), and TEAMM members in the state of Yucatan in Mexico (these members are called TEAMM YUC). In the beginning of TEAMM the only members were from the United States and the idea was that these members would educate and train youth in the Yucatan peninsula to become members of TEAMM as well and that both factions of TEAMM could collaborate and work together to train more members in both the US and Mexico. Over the past two years these two factions of TEAMM have grown and developed together and are fulfilling the original goal. They continue to spread information working together as well as independently of one another. The goal is that in the future there will be more TEAMM's (i.e. TEAMM Isla Mujeres) and all the TEAMMS will continue to develop and be sustained over time. I hope it is all beginning to make more sense if you were unfamiliar with the idea before.
Back to the meeting. We talked with them about when TEAMM US is coming and whether or not those dates would work for them, where the best place for the workshop was, how much time they would be willing to commit and what times would work best, and what they wanted to learn during the workshop. After talking abotu the scheduling we talked about the different options for the workshop content and they decided that they wanted to learn about the different types of events they could coordinate and the planning processes.
After talking a little bit we moved on to doing activities. We did one that highlighted the importance of communication in group work as well as one that demonstrated how, as people, we are all connected.
This is a Kody and Lena original, it is originally a "parlour" game that we modified into a communication activity. The girls split up into two groups of three and each group was given a piece of paper that was folded into three parts. Each person chose a part of the body to draw (head, torso or legs). The head was drawn in the top section of the paper, the torso in the middle section, and the legs in the bottom section. Each person was unable to look at the other sections of the body (the paper should remain folded during the drawing process so conceal the other drawings) or talk about what the other sections looked like until everyone was done drawing. When everyone was finished drawing, the piece of paper is unfolded to reveal the "creature" that everyone created.
The point of the activity is to show that it important to communicate your ideas with the group as well as listen to the ideas of others in order for the final outcome to be complete. We explained that even though all three people had really good ideas the person they created was unorganized (i.e. It's head and legs weren't connected to it's body). We then put it into the context of TEAMM, when planning an event or workshop it is important to communicate your ideas to your group so that the event will go smoothly and will have organization.
Activity #2
We played the string game again. Since none of these girls had been at the first couple of meetings and it is always a favorite, we decided to redo it.
After the girls left we were packing up our materials and Jessica and Mercedes came back and gave us tickets to their dance performance the the next night (tonight). Normally we would be going to Yoga since it is Wednesday but 1) We can't pass up a dance performance, specially when the theme is 80's music 2) How could we turn down a gift from our students? As a teacher, its always such a proud moment to see your students enjoying, excelling, and taking pride in something. I have been to a few dance performances of Brazos students over the past couple of years (dance performances are a big deal and very common at the schools here) and I always end up crying (very fat proud tears), let's see if I can hold it together this time.
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