Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Panama Verde Youth Camp

The regional Panama Verde camp happened during January. About 12 different Panama Verde groups got together and the agricultural high school IPT Silencio for 5 days of ice breakers, trash pickup, talks on the environment and leadership and games! It was a great mix between Ngobe groups and Latino. There was even another indigenous group called the Naso present.

The people with green shirts on are the counselors. They are in their twenties and went from being in groups to part of the Panama Verde leadership, most are from more developed cities and are studying at a university and all work for free. Panama Verde has a saying ¨For youth, by youth¨ the only person over 25 in the whole group is the national director who is standing next to the guy in the wheel chair.


One of the confidence builders we did as part of the ropes course day. I didn’t do this but it certainly gave some of the larger kids confidence to hear all there teammates cheering them on. This is my group picking up trash. We broke up into 5 different colored groups and you had to wear your colors at all times. We had a great mix of loud, animated, and educated Latinos as well as more quiet reserved Ngobes. I think this is itself was a great learning experience. The kid with the part in his hair is from my town. This was his first trip ever out of town so you can imagine how intimidating all the ice breakers and goofy dances would be. He ended up doing a great job later as he gained confidence making jokes.


I did the camps with 2 other PC volunteers that have groups in Bocas. This was for a game similar to capture the flag that we played at night. We were giants and could tag kids and bring them to jail. In order for them to capture us they need 6 kids touching a leader at once. This was a great exercise in teamwork. The first round not one giant one captured. The second round they all hid in corners and alleys and came out in huge groups and ended up catching us all.

This is my group ¨The Claws.¨ If we lost our flag (which we did) we all had to do an embarrassing dance called the epileptic chicken... yeah its as strange as it sounds.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Joe! This whole experience looks really fun and what a great way to have the kids experience the larger world. Great pictures!
Love,
Mom