Musical Break!
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 […]
Lesson 3: Get Silly!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2ie_8kFxFQ?hl=en&fs=1&w=425&h=349] 3) Get Silly While working to inspire a community to make a lasting change for themselves, when the community has never thought critically about the possibility to start a movement from within; it could be easily forgotten that the best work stems from the work you do while having fun. We are […]
‘The point of the situation’ – 7 Lessons We Have Learned So Far
Our time in Esperanza has come to an end. As we get into our last week in the Dominican Republic, I feel that Kirsten, Kevin and I have a bunch of epiphanies about what the ‘whys’ ‘whats’ and ‘hows’ of delivering projects. We tend to be too ‘high’ in our moments of panic and glory […]
Let`s talk ideas
Since our time here, we have spoken much of what is in an ‘idea’ and by extension a ‘project’. The misconception is that projects are resource exhaustive and grandiose. In truth they can be – but those projects do not often become the sustainable ones nor the type of projects that in fact promote capacity […]
Feeling re energized
Only my second blog since being in Esperanza – I think that is testament to the lack of time we have had to really reflect on our experience here with the projects. Otherwise, trust me; you would have a novel in your hand rather than these few others. All digressions aside; wow! Since we first […]
Some of the best photos from Esperanza
[slideshow] Our time in the smaller city of Esperanza was great, and the group of young men from both the city and the batay were a wonderful group to work with. Enjoy this short slideshow of my favorite pictures and be sure to see the complete collection at: Flickr. -Kevin Potter
Entonces, como empiezo a explicar hoy día?
My feeling so far is that the theme of this project in the Dominican so far has been `back to basics`. In every sense that is. For Development this means scrapping your models and turning a fresh page to redraw the possibilities. An idea today could be community development tomorrow. Concepts you hold to dearly […]
