Late night brainstorming

It is 3.40 am and we just turned the lights off. As for every incredible day, this morning seems a lifetime away. I am trying to use this blog entry to recollect my thoughts, which feel all colorful and chaotic (a perfectly Bangladeshi mind space). Retelling the day in a few lines would turn into […]

A tale of two organizational stories

There is something quite inspiring about meeting someone who has at one point walked in your shoes. It is remarkable not for the fact that you have done the same thing but rather that you have faced the same challenges. So you can imagine how excited I was to connect with YPSA an organization whose […]

The royal Bangladeshi welcome

No red carpets or trumpets but rather a room full of 30 Bangladeshis aged 18-25 eagerly waiting our arrival. This to me the best reception of all because even after arriving an hour and a half late (train delay from Dhaka to Chittagong don’t you know), we were still warmly received with sweet smiles. Without […]

Recrear’s Wish List!

Dear Friends and Supporters, This Holiday Season you can decide to support Recrear by donating some of the equipment we need for our projects. Below is a wish list of what we need for our upcoming projects with a description of how they will be used and a link to Amazon where you can purchase […]

Recrear Participacion Photo Essay

Recrear Participación is an interactive workshop providing young people with the tools to develop their ideas and passion into sustainable community projects. Recrear Participación was piloted between July 10th and July 25th, 2011 in two, separate, week-long workshops in the Dominican Republic in Esperanza and Santiago.  Recrear Participación encourages participants to engage more pro-actively with their community and to […]

Recrear Participación, Wrapping up!

Kevin, Kirsten and I have been catapulted from a wonderful two weeks in the Dominican Republic to Canada, where we are giving 100% at Recrear Magnify. We still have few blog entries in the pipeline- but for now, we would like to thank all the people that have supported us during our time in the […]

Musical Break!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT9Ao6ah6BU?hl=en&fs=1&w=425&h=349]

Making music

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_5YA2RddE0?hl=en&fs=1&w=425&h=349] While in Santiago, we stayed with a host family of our close friend, Eric.  Eric is a Dominican, studying Music Therapy in New Orleans at Loyola University with his colleague Alex Legges.   These guys were doing such amazing work around the city, outside of our work in Recrear, that we asked them to come do a […]

Lessons 5, 6, 7

My reflections of the day are all dedicated to my ‘colleagues’. If you know Kirsten, Kevin and I, you know that we are all VERY different. Together, we are a tragicomic and soap-opera-worth trio.  Spending every single awake (and asleep) moment together for the last four weeks has been an interesting process full of ups, […]

Lesson 4:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA1xpPCw-y8&w=560&h=349]   4) There Is More Than the Obvious Way to Communicate How do you communicate when . . living in a Spanish – Creole – French speaking environment. Even just speaking “Spanish” means something different here: where you are expected to drop your s’s, shorten your words and talk as if all one […]