It’s been a crazy week here in Yucatan, and it’s hard to believe that there’s only one week left before debriefing! The first community I visited this week was Temozón Sur, where Ricky and Jose are working with community members on a sports training project for children and constructing a ramp to the Casa de Salud in community to make the building more accessible. In the afternoon I got to watch and help as the boys worked with local teenagers and the librarian in town on leading an educational summer camp called the Curso de Verano with our partner agency.

The second community I visited was San Antonio Chun, where I found Domenica and Angelina also leading activities for a Curso de Verano. In the afternoon we met with the local youth group to talk about their community project – cleaning up the local park and planting palm trees there. The girls also led a zumba class for the older women of the community that day.

Last on my route this week was Muchucuxcah. Here, Aranis and Maggie have been working very closely with a group of local teenagers on a park clean up and to install lights around a big tree in the center of town. Their educational activities have been going well, and they have a group of children in community who always call out to them and ask when their next activities will be. In the morning before I left the next day, I also got to watch as Maggie washed her clothes by hand, first churning them in a bucket with soap and water before rinsing them and hanging the clothes to dry.

In each community I also worked to help prepare the participants and some of the youth for our overnight youth encuentro this weekend, where 4 local youth and our 2 participants from each community got together to take part in workshops, make tshirts, and play games. It was incredibly fun for everyone, and now all of the youth are excited to be back in communtiy to finish up their projects!

-Nick