UPDATES, UPDATES READ ALL ABOUT 'EM!!

We received the final addition to our team this week. Amanda flew in on Tuesday night and jumped right into the action. She will be the last addition to the third wave and we are loving her. She is ecstatic about her time here and said she felt like a little child looking out the bus window en route to our house. She has already had an amazing first work day building adobe stoves in rural villages! Welcome Amanda!

Leadership Seminars

Help International’s leadership seminars received national attention this week! Belize National Television interviewed volunteers, recorded segments of the seminars, and created a five-minute news segment on help international’s creation and involvement in the leadership classes. The classes have received very strong attendance through out the week in both San Ignacio and Belmopan (combined attendance has been around 25-30). This week volunteers taught classes on how to develop important leadership characteristics, how to sculpt healthy perceptions within a person or organization, and public speaking training. This week we also had the opportunity to hear from a very special guest speaker by the name of Kaila who was Belize’s entrepreneur of the year award winner in 2009. The speech was both inspirational and motivational to all participants and volunteers involved.

Participants of the seminar have been very involved and excited about the skills they are learning. Volunteers have been very pleased with the eagerness of the participants and each meeting has been both very educational and motivating. Help Volunteers that were involved in the seminar classes this week were: Calvin, Cydnee, Whitney , Cory, and NaTaya.

George Price Center Literacy & Conflict Resolution

This week at the George Price Centre we had a training meeting to discuss the lesson plans and activities for the Conflict Resolution camp. We talked about the outline for the 2 weeks and divvied up responsibilities for teaching and facilitating activities. We also discussed ways to encourage participation and a reward system to reinforce principles learned during the camp. We are anticipating an amazing next two weeks working with the teens in Belmopan and will keep the updates coming.

Rural Health

This week the Rural Health team hit a few walls. At the beginning of the week we learned that we ran out of test strips for the blood glucose machine and had some trouble getting more so we spent a day looking around from pharmacy to pharmacy for strips that would fit our machine. With no luck, we ended up at a restaurant and were able to talk to the waitress about diabetes and she let us take her blood pressure and glucose levels. We were able to direct her to a doctors office that will be opening up in a week which is offering free prescriptions and check-ups opening day. Later on that day we made more phone calls to a contact in Belize City to get more strips to allow us to finish up Georgeville. We finally received more strips then we could have imagined, finished Georgeville and moved to a new location. This week we have been working in a town called San Antonio and it’s going really well. It’s interesting to see how each village is so different. San Antonio is more of a self-sustaining town where most families have their own gardens and exercise regularly. It is a pretty large town so we may be there for the next week or two, but the good thing is that we have enough strips!

Octavia Waight

This week we had an amazing opportunity to meet with a nurse who spends a few days a week doing physical therapy exercises with each individual resident. She encouraged us to come and help her, so on Wednesday, Bryant and Krysta spent the morning working with several of the residents on simple yet efficient exercises. Everything from assisting in walking, weight lifting, and muscle strengthening exercises. This new project will be a great help to the Octavia weight staff and plus the elderly love our encouragement. In accordance to the physical therapy project, we are still continuing our weekly visits just to bond with the residents. We often play bingo, read, and talk to them. They are a joy to be around and we look forward to helping out the staff and residents in anyway possible in the near future.

Square Foot Gardening

This last week we were able to finish all six frames for the Square Foot Gardening project at the school in Succotz, and recruited some eager little helpers along the way! We finished constructing and raising the chicken-wire fence and the plants look like they’ll be ready to produce around the time school starts up.

Adobe stoves

The adobe stoves project took off in Arenal this week! With six enthusiastic families, the first being the village leader, we were able to begin construction of the bases of four different stoves around the village! We received so much help from everyone, and by the end of our first day, some of the villagers were taking construction into their own hands. Self-sustaining! Goal met! Construction was a blast, and we got mighty muddy along the way…

Hospital

This week at the hospital we dug more trenches at the dialysis center for the sewage system. We also filled the 4-foot hole we dug with broken cinder blocks. We helped with electrical wiring, putting insulation in the ceiling and putting up the ceiling tiles. There was a lot of trash blown around the hospital grounds so we also cleaned that up. It is always a party at the dialysis center with Ignacio, DH & Wilhelm. Love it!

Ballers for Life

Bryant and Krysta are working on a new project down at the basketball courts! Who says you can’t have fun while working? They will be assisting in coaching a local basketball camp for the next two weeks. There are three different age group classes and it is taught in two-hour waves. Bryant and Krysta are having just as much fun as the children and Bryant ‘B’ was able to donate two Basketball nets to the court.

Weekend Adventures

This past weekend we all split up and took different adventures. A group of us went to Hopkins beach, another to Tobacco Reef and another group chilled here in San Ignacio.

The Tobacco Reef crew stayed for a night on the smallest island in the world, snorkeled, saw manatee's and Bryant caught two barracudas.

The Hopkins crew ran into some luck by running into Calv's high school friend. They ended up staying at his house for free and loving life on the beach.

The crew who stayed at home got some peace and rest while the crazy ones were away. They ended up going to a resort and the saturday market and indulging in some delicious Cayo Chocolate.

T-pain has the luxury this weekend of hanging out with her boyfriend! He flew in today from the states to pay a little visit!

Ray, Cyd, Kayci and Whit also left for a weekend break in Orange Walk on a Jungle River adventure. I bet we will have some amazing pics and stories from them when they return.

Until then, stay posted.