International Women´s Day

Last week we celebrated International Women´s Day a day early, on March 7th with a youth fair focused on providing information for women´s rights and prevention of gender based violence. International Women´s Day is a BIG deal here in Nicaragua, which was a surprise to me considering I had never even heard of it before I came here. That´s a bit ironic considering the roots of the celebration are in feminist movements in the U.S., but it doesn´t seem to get the kind of attention up north as it does here. In Nicaragua, it is both a day of activism of demanding fair treatment and a day of celebration of women. At CANTERA-Ciudad Sandino we organized the Feria Juvenil with the youth movement (MOJUV) to provide a space for young people to come together and reach out to the community with information on a very important theme here. We invited different government institutions such as the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of the Family to come set up an informative stand and share information, as well as non-government organizations to share the work that they do in the community. Because our strength at CANTERA is our socio-cultural program (which is how most of the youth we work with get involved), we also organized a cultural program throughout the day. There were traditional and modern dance groups, music and popular theater presentations on themes of violence and gender equality. All of this came together with several weeks of planning and organizing to encourage other organizations to participate. We were thrown a real curve late in the planning process though: we found out the afternoon before the event that due to Hugo Chavez´s death, we would no longer be able to hold the Feria in front of the City Hall, since the entire country is in seven days of mourning! We had to scramble to move the event, but we found a way to make it work. We set up camp in the street outside the CANTERA center, and although it wasn´t as central as the City Hall, there was still a good crowd checking out the informational stands and the cultural acts. And as a friend pointed out to me after the event, the best part about it was that we literally took back the streets! We were dancing and doing theater in the street, reaching out to the community on a grass roots level. Check out the MOJUV facebook page for lots of pictures of the event, and hopefully for some video clips soon. Que vivan las mujeres! http://www.facebook.com/groups/78089564763/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Let the delegations begin!

One of our responsibilities as part of the CANTERA youth program is to host delegation groups that visit from schools and churches in the States. CANTERA organizes a visit for them to get to know the work that is carried out and see some of the authentic barrios and rural communities of Nicaragua. They idea is that they might have an educational experience to learn about the reality of living here, as oppose to a vacation in which they would just visit tourist sites. ` Last week we hosted our first delegation group of the year in the Ciudad Sandino site. They were a group of high schoolers with several adult leaders. We started out the visit by taking the group to visit some of the houses where the youth live. The differences from a middle class neighborhood in the U.S. are all too clear: houses on the edge of the ¨cause¨, a drainage that is perpetually filled with garbage; several families living in one house, often up to 15 people under one roof; laundry done by hand and bucket showers because of low or non-existent water pressure. Following the home visits, we took the group for a tour of the center to see the activities going on. The highlight of the visit for me was seeing the jaws drop on the North American high schoolers as they saw our dance group go into action. There`s a lot I have to critique about globalization and U.S. cultural values, but there really is something special about music that brings people together. So when Beyonce`s ¨Crazy in Love¨came on (anyone see her rock it during the Super Bowl halftime show??), I could just see the U.S. youth itching to get out there with the dance group. We had a quick informal class and within 20 minutes we had the whole group swiveling back and forth, jumping around and pumping up and down to Beyonce! What a moment to bring kids together... We followed the dance class with a visit to the karate training and finished up with a reflection between youth from Ciudad Sandino and those from the States. This was the first of several delegation visits we will be receiving, and I was very encouraged by the openness of the group and by the welcoming spirit of the youth here.