5 C’s + Service
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| Escuela de la Laja de Icononzo de Tolima |
environment). It was kind of a throw-away lesson stuck in between proposals for revising Spanish-speaking countries’ agricultural exports and international exchanges about hobbies, just to cover bases and, frankly, kill time before I’m back from maternity leave.
But then Goya of ChocQuibTown retweeted “ayudanos a ayudar 50 niños campesinos #Icononzotolima sin útiles escolares NO $$ solo Especie. Y si fueras tu?” from @mauricio_ttoro, AyudandoAndo. Of course this demands more immediate attention than post-midterm filler, so I think I’ll shuffle units, hopefully in time to catch the end of the back-to-school sales.
I’ve emailed the group and received photos of the school and a list of 66 things they need for their school. Some of them are not really conducive to international shipping, and some are beyond our price range…unless we get really active! This might be a project we can keep going all year, a connection that students maintain and keep building until we can get, say, a TV or computer or two for their class. And who knows? Maybe we could field a visit come summer?
So here is my plan at its current stage of development:
Items
- Present the project to the class, divide them into teams (by table?), and have them come up with a list of what they think they should send.
- Compare their lists to each other, then to the actual list (plus the school’s picture) they sent me (yay! authentic text!) This will be good for a few interesting discussions about comparing schooling conditions in other countries and maybe interpersonal communication, because the missives sent from my contact’s Blackberry requires a little more interpretation than a more “presentational” text ordinarily would.
- Discuss what we can–and hope to–collect from their list, as well as what is not feasible because of cost or shipping regulations. Make a list of basics that we’d like to provide for every student, plus a few classroom essentials (definitely working in the household part of the objective as well–chairs and brooms being on the list!)
- Teams can then pick a “big ticket” per group and divvy up or otherwise decide how to obtain their basic list items.
