Workshop – Stringing Together Feelings
This last Saturday was the beginning of a new series of talleres (workshops) with Educaser in the barrios in the outskirts of La Plata, this one in a barrio called Villa Alba. The workshops are aimed at adolescents (in this case a pretty broad definition) between 13 and 26 from the neighborhood. We have already gone to the barrio a few times to talk with the community organizers to find a space and to work on spreading the work to the kids in the area. The workshops are structured as follows: there are four initial encounters, which Educaser calls “Hilando Sentidos”, in which all the teenagers meet together and get to know each other. Even though they live in the same barrio, and many are related, they go to different schools and many don’t know each other. Then after the first four encounters, they split off into more specialized workshops that are aimed more towards their individual interests, one in science in the neighborhood, one in communication (filming, newspapers), and one in literature and acting.
I have been here now for the closing of these talleres and the exposition of their work in two different barrios, so I am happy to finally be involved in the process from the beginning. And not only am I observing but I am helping the girls running the workshop to design each meeting and control the large amount of teenages that showed up.
The first meeting with the kids was fantastic. There were about 25 in total for this meeting, though we were told that most likely their will be more this coming Saturday. They arrived timid, sticking to their groups of friends or family members that they already knew. To mix things up, we cut up three different pieces of colored paper and handed the colors out randomly, and then asked them to create groups based on the colors of their paper. Once they had divided (grumblingly) into their groups, we paired them up and had them interview each other, to later present the other person. I can attest, they DID NOT want to do this, they were shy, closed, did not want to work together or get to know each other. They said it was boring or they just didn’t feel like it. A typical adolescent reaction. So we threw ourselves into the groups and interviewed them or had them interview us and eventually they got moving and started to enjoy themselves. Then we asked them to present to the whole group the person they had interviewed, and again they were shy, timid and resistant to the idea. And again we had to encourage them and lead by example.
What surprised me the most was the amount of the younger girls that had children. Or the younger guys that were fathers, or that had already dropped out of school at age 15 and were working. Or even those who were slightly older and may not have dropped out of school, worked at night and on the weekends to help support the family. There isn’t much time for recreation or fun, or for learning what you like to do or who you want to be. Encouraging them during the interviews to talk about what they might want to be when they got older was like pulling teeth, because they didn’t want to think about it or they had no desire at all to be anything.
After the introductions, we up them back into their groups and gave them each a blank poster, with some magazines to cut things out of, some paint and some markers and asked them to think as a group about the things that they liked and didn’t like about their neighborhood. After a little while of staring at the blank white paper, they came to life and the posters they created where incredible.
Sadly, and I think this is a product of the environment they live in, most of the things that they put on the poster were the bad things of the neighborhood. Trash everywhere, a beautiful soccer field, but with a pile of trash next to it, no traffic lights, people driving too fast, cars hitting people, robberies, etc. One group took the poster in another direction and showed how ideally they would like the neighborhood to be, with a shopping center and people walking safely in the streets.
It was really incredible to watch the kids come to life. When they were asked to express their opinions and be heard, they had something to say. When they were asked their opinion about they place that they lived, and what they wanted from their neighborhood, they had a voice. While in the beginning many refused to even speak, by the end they were throwing around ideas, painting, teaching each other, and sharing ideas. Given a blank piece of paper, and asked to express themselves and THEIR thoughts, their minds came to life! They want to be heard, they just think there there is no one there to listen.
