March 16th: Community from afar

Currently, the situation with Covid-19 is affecting the way that the community interacts as a whole. Most schools are closed, and many people are trying to practice social isolation in order to avoid getting sick or potentially getting others sick. This affects the way that groups like Abriendo Mentes work because they have to figure out a way to help others while at the same time prioritizing the safety of the people who run the organization and the people they are trying to help. This can affect my project because I also need to implement my role in the community, while doing it from a distance.

In CAS, I think that it is important to always maintain a role in the community even if you don’t have an opportunity to be directly involved with it. This is especially true for the situation that is happening right now with Covid-19. Currently, I am unable to take part in the main aspect of my project, which is volunteering at Abriendo Mentes and helping the kids there to learn English. However, even though I can’t directly interact with them, I still have the role as their helper and teacher that I need to implement in the community. A way that I can do this is by planning ahead for what I can do in the future. Right now, I am doing this by planning lessons ahead of time that I can help the kids with when I am able to come back. Something that actually comes out to be positive from this situation is that I can strengthen my role in the community, especially if I effectively use this extra time to prepare better and more detailed lessons.

An aspect that helps me with this role in the community is that I have access to different resources that help me to be successful. One of these resources that I think is not recognized enough in a community is the ability to work with others and receive help from them. I am very fortunate that at Abriendo Mentes I have the opportunity to work with many people who are very skilled at teaching and running organizations. They are able to provide me with feedback to help me improve, advice based of what they’ve done before, and answer any questions that I may have. Having the ability to collaborate with other people is important in a project like this is essential because you can work with each other’s strengths and combine them in order to work to the best of everyone’s ability.

Another resource that I have that helps me to implement my role in the community is the knowledge that I have gained from school and other experiences. I can use this knowledge to improve and expand my abilities as a teacher. For example, in 9th grade we visited the Brasilito school every week and prepared lessons for different grades in order to help them out a bit, especially because they didn’t have as much as an opportunity as others to receive a good education. That is actually what gave me the idea for my current project. Now I can use the knowledge that I gained from preparing those lessons to help create the ones that I use now. It also helped me to learn how to interact with kids, especially those who don’t often know English. Overall, I have the ability to use my experience from the past to improve in the present, which is very helpful for my project.

I think that an aspect of my personality that contributes to the value of the community efforts in my project is my ability to empathize with the kids’ experiences. I can help them by creating personal connections to what they are learning, especially because I am close to their age and am able to understand what they are going through in school. This is important in this project because when you are trying to learn something new, it helps to have someone who can understand it in the same way that you do. Another aspect of my personality that is beneficial to my role in the community is that I am a hard worker and I want to be able to deliver my work to the best of my ability. This means that I try to be detailed with my work and create things that will be helpful for their learning, but also an enjoyable experience.

In conclusion, although we are in a situation in which we have to be separated from each other in person, that should not stop us from working together as a whole. Each person has a role in the community that they can follow in order to help others, and there are ways to implement these roles even from far away. For example, I can maintain my role in the community by preparing ahead of time for when I can come back to my project. This will help me to come back stronger and be able to start even better than when I left off.