Serving in Guatemala: STOMP! in Guatemala

Serving in Guatemala

In February 2008, we moved to Guatemala, Central America, to live out our dream to help the poor communities living in this developing country. It is difficult to leave our family and friends but we know that this will be a decision that we will not regret.

Almost 60% of all Guatemalans, or 6.4 million people, live in poverty making less than $2US per day. Approximately 16% of this number are in extreme poverty living on less than $1US per day. Furthermore, more than 50% of the children are malnourished and have no hope for a better future. Reasons for the continuous poverty in Guatemala include illiteracy, lack of access to health care and low levels of education. The Arms of Jesus Children's Mission (AOJ), a private non-profit organization, has responded to this need by creating a school with specialized educational programs, meeting the daily nutritional requirements of the children, and offering social support to families. We feel very fortunate to be working with an organization that is dedicated to meeting the basic needs of the poor communities in Guatemala. For more information on AOJ, you can visit their website through the hot link on the bottom right.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

STOMP! in Guatemala

One of Sandra’s duties as Director of Education is to teach workshops to the teaching staff, the majority of whom are quite young (average age of 23) and do not have much experience in various areas such as class-room management techniques, education stimuli, or alternative teaching methods to capture the learning interests of a broad range of students. In this case, Sandra’s workshops become very valuable to get the teachers exposed to different ideas.

In one recent workshop, Sandra explained how to incorporate artistic expression in the classroom. Artistic expression is so critical for our students to gain self-confidence and to develop an identity that will be key to their intellectual development. The problem is that in Guatemala, artistic expression is not really common or encouraged so our teachers have very little resources to draw upon to teach their students.

To demonstrate how artistic expression can be fun and informative, Sandra introduced "stomp". This is a distinct, sub-genre of physical theatre where the body is incorporated with other ordinary objects as a means of producing percussion and movement. It has become a powerful tool in North American schools to teach alternative means of creative expression and improve the self-confidence of normally timid children.

In this particular workshop, Sandra first talked about the importance of artistic expression and gave a few examples of simple activities that the teachers can use. Sandra then showed a video clip of the STOMP! dance troupe, which is a UK-based theater group who has become world famous for its performances. Then the big moment arrived and Sandra had the staff organized into teams, with each team needing to create a short musical presentation using only objects they can find on mission property. The interesting thing was that almost all of the mission staff got involved (not just the teachers in the workshop) because they were so eager to participate! They did an excellent job as they used ordinary objects such as brooms, paint cans, garbage lids, plastic tubes and even running water to make beautiful rhythms. All the teachers, even the ones who were really shy, had a fun time but most of all, they learned a new skill to get the children excited about learning.

Below are a couple videos of the staff so you can see what they came up with on their own. You can see from the videos that the teachers were quite creative in making music by only using ordinary objects they found on the mission grounds!