About time to write...And a story about birthday´s

For those of you who have been kind enough to follow this blog, please accept my apologies for not having written anytihng sooner.

As you might be aware, at the end of July, I headed back to the UK for a month.  After a great time with friends and family, I arrived back out here to Nicaragua at the end of August.   I have been back working with Casa Alianza Nicaragua for just over a month now.  For some reason I have found it difficult to process my thoughts since being back  and to put them in writing, but will now try and start doing so again.  

My new contract has me working part time in exactly the same position, in the area of Arts, Sports, Culture and Recreation, working directly with the kids to provide healthy and sustainable forms of activity.   The other half of my time will be spent working on a new project with all of our Casa Alianza sites in Latin America (Honduras, Guatemala, Merxico and Nicaragua) to develop a brand new websaite representing the work being done in all of the countries.

Of course those who know me, know I am not exactly a computer person, and I am much more about the work direct with the kids, but still, I am sure I will make it work out ok.  It does mean that on this blog I will be able to propvide stories about the kids here in Nicaragua, and the work being done by all of our sites in Latin America.  

So I guess that is about it for a personal level.   Despite a few doubts about my new position, all is well, and I am, on the whole, happy to be back out here.

Before I leave it for today, it´s time for a stroy to start off this new set of entries.   

In a few days I turn 26, so lets do something about birthdays:   

For the majority of the kdis we work with, celebrating a birthday is a distant concept.  Many who do not have docuemntion, don´t even know when there birthday is.  For others, the daily grind of trying to survive a life on the streets, or abuses and explitation, means that there is nothing much to celebrate.

But every child should be able to celebrate their brithday, in fact, I almost think it is something that should be mentioned in the Universal Declaration on the Right´s of Children.

As such, every month at Casa Alianza Nicaragua we hold a birthday party for all of the kids who have turned a year old over the course of the month.   The event invovles a very special recognition for each child, birthday cake, songs, dancing, sporting competitions, and most importantly, the chance to be a kid once again, and have the space to celebrate and have fun and feel very much part of a community based in the values of love and respect.    

It is actually not that easy to coordinate such events.    The kids have undergone such trauma that is much more difficult to simply have fun than it might it appear.   Birthday parties such as these, therefore, do not work miracles in suddenly creating groups of kids running and playing and just wanting to enjoy themselves.   But what it does shoow to everyone, is that when they are ready, here at Casa Alianza Nicaragua we will always be offering that space, and although it may be tough to adjust to that new way of life, we will always be making it happen. 

I hope that makes sense.

To be honest, I´m not really a big fan of celebrating my own birthday, it kind of makes me a bit homesick, but I guess this year I might just view it a bit differently, beacuse being able to celebrate your birthday is a privilege and quite a wonderful thing, and so this year, by knowing I have such wonderful people around me, near and far, wand knowing that there have always been people to celebrate it with me, will make it that bit more special.   

Its good to be writing again!

A 10 month reflection

So as I mentioned in my last entry, I happily took the option to stay on for further  year here and keep doing the work I love doing.  Before I start up in the new position, I will be heading back to the UK for about a month, at the end of July.   As such, I thought I would take this opportunity to reflect upon these 10 months that I have been working at Casa Alianza Nicaragua. 

During these months, I have had the opportunity to work with over 500 kids coming from very difficult nd traumatic backgrounds of abuse, violence, extreme poverty, exploitation and life on the streets, and do what I can to help them turn their lives around, and provide the opportunites and tools for them to do so.

I have climbed volcanoes with gang members, helped coordinate national sporting events to provide alternatives to drug use, worked out on the streets were kids live and sniff glue, participated in workshops to help combat the crime of human trafficking, and done what I can to provide healthy and sustainable activities, respect, love, understanding, discipline and support to all the kids we work with.

It has, on the whole, been a remarkable experience.   There have been low points -  getting Dengue Fever right at the start was probably the highlight of that, and there have certainly been times where I have felt the work getting too much for me.    In spite of that, I love what I do, and I am aware how privileged I am to be in this line of work.

I also remained convinced that Casa Alianza really is quite a remarkable organization.  The work it puts in to support, defend, protect and rehabilitate children and teenagers is phenomenal and vitally important.  All the kids we work are provided with shelter, food, education, skills training, psychological support, legal support, family reintegration processes, medical care, activities and trips.   The work also extends to the communities and their families, in order to build capacities and tackle the problems at their root levels.

So there it is, 10 months at Casa Alianza Nicaragua, and one more year to follow.   It has been tough, very tough at times,  but that’s all   part of the fun.

No child or adolescent ever chose to live on the streets, no child or adolescent ever chose to work in the sex industry or on the streets under the baking sun selling cigarettes and chewing gum.   As such, we will keep working to try and ensure kids are not forced into those situations, and keep supporting all those who are.

At this point I remember the tragic words of Nahman, a child living on the streets of Guatemala, brutally murdered by Guatemalan police.  On his gravestone are the words which still inspire me more than ever -

"Solo quise ser un nino, pero no me dejaron" - I only wanted to be a child, but they didn´t let me.   

More than ever, we want to let children and teenagers have the childhood and adolescene they deserve and are entitled to, no longer robbded of it in cruel and inhuman ways.

I remain grateful to all who read this blog and support the work of Casa Alianza.

Staying On

It was, to be honest, a tough decision, and I am really very grateful to some of my friends and family who helped me out on it.

Anybody who reads this blog will know I absolutely love the work at do, but at times it can be tough and draining, and living in Managua (not exactly the safest or friendliest city in the world) never makes it easier.  

So when the National Director of Casa Alianza Nicaragua offered me the chance to stay on for another year, as a regular member of staff in place of being a volunteer, I was faced by a dilemma.  Do I go for it for one more year, is it now time to head on to something new, or even to head back home?

It took a lot of thought, but I have decided to go for, and accepted the opportunity to continue working out here for another year.

I have been exceptionally fortunate, and done a lot of wonderful jobs in a lot of fantastic countries. But one of the main things that I have really discovered out here, is that to truly make a difference, takes a lot of time, and a lot of commitment. 

I would say, in all honesty, that it took me more or less six months here before I really understood how to work best with the kids and the other members of staff.   In those six months I had to really work hard to learn the patience, understanding and the discipline needed to work with these kids, that I have talked about in previous entries.  I also had to learn how to keep my own motivation and personal faith high, in spite of considerable challenges to it.  

I would now happily say that I have got to the level where my understanding and practice is now strong enough to be able to really do positive things.  For me, the project I set up, which I wrote about last month, as been a major example of this.    It took a long time and a lot of effort to get to this level, where I have felt confident enough in myself to set up projects which I really feel might benefit our kids, but now I am there. 

As such, to move on and do something new, or maybe to head back to Europe, just didn’t seem right at this point.  I feel very privileged to have got to the stage where I am at with the kids and other members of staff, and it would be too much of a shame to lose that. 

As such, this blog will be active for at least one more year, and I will do my best to keep the stories coming as we keep working to protect, support and rehabilitate the lives of children of have gone through existencies that no child would ever choose, including living on the street, substance abuse, commercial and sexual exploitation, human trafficking, violence, abuse and abandonment. 

For those in Europe/UK, I will be flying back to the UK at the end of July to catch  up with family and friends,  and will be about until the end of August, before heading back out here to Nicaragua.  

Carlos on the Streets of Managua

Its been a while since I wrote about any of the kids stories here on this blog.  As you can imagine, I have to be sure I am protecting their privacy, which is why I certainly can´t put any photos up here, and is also why I have been avoiding stories recently. 

But I thought it was time to share one of the stories, so that the reality faced by these kids is still a major part of this blog. 

Carlos is almost a bit of a celebrity here at Casa Alianza Nicaragua, as, in the 9 months I have been working here, he has arrived about 8 times, and each time he has managed to stay for a maximum of about 2 days, before leaving us to head back to the streets.

Carlos is 12 years old.  He lives all over Managua, in various locations across the city, always on the streets.  He can often be seen walking around in baggy, dirty clothing, carrying the little jar of glue stuffed under his nose.  He has learnt a certain charm which has enabled him to get by, picking up some dance moves and basic English to entertain people coming out of discos, or foreigners in the main touristy locations.  

He is a good kid, and despite his life on the streets, whenever he comes to Casa Alianza he is usually well behaved and fun to be around.  But, as I have explored in some of my previous entries, the addiction to glue is an immensely strong one, and it is his need to get back on the drugs that has always prevented Carlos from staying with us for longer periods of time and really receiving the support he needs. 

On Monday morning, as I got on my bus on my way to work, and to my surprise, I saw Carlos get on the bus at my same stop.  He was on his way to Casa Alianza, he had decided it was time to give it another go.  He arrived in bear feet, a pair of shorts,  a long baggy t-shirt, all filthy, uncut nails, and a full head of dirty hair covered in head lice.

Now, Wednesday afternoon, and Carlos is still with us.  We have provided him with clothing and shoes, a tooth brush, and treated his hair for head-lice.  He also been participating in a number of activities, and he was able to impress everyone using his dance skills in this morning's Caopiera class, a new activity we are currently trying out with the kids.

Dealing with a kid like Carlos is tough.  We want to help him and give him the support he needs.  So far, we have not succeeded in getting into the level we need.  Carlos is well awayre of the benefits of being with us, but addictions are incredibly powerful.  All of us are really hoping that this time he will stick around.  We are of course doing what we can to provide activities and sustainable options, so that Carlos will no longer see the street as one of his options.  It might be that once again we are not successful, but whatever happens we will keep trying.  We can only provide support in so far as a kid allows us to support them, and we hope that this time Carlos will stay and allow us to help him. 

That Friday Feeling...Casa Alianza Style

Friday is one of my favourite days at Casa Alianza Nicaragua.  There`s the obvious factor that it means the end of the week, and a bit of a rest after another intense week, but also because a few special things that happen at Casa Alianza on a Friday afternoon.

To set the scene, its time to introduce on this blog the work of the Casa Alianza Nicaragua, Family Reintegration Team.  It is our intention that every kid living at our residential centers, will ultimately be reintegrated in a healthy and sustainable fashion, with members of their family, or, if this is not possible, in a safe and sustainable environment. 

The Family Reintegration Team starts a process for every child and teenager in our protection centers, so that their reinsertion into society, in a way which does not involve falling back into former behavior patterns, is possible and easy to reach.  The Team organizes weekend visits for the kids that we are able to send out of our residential center, and ensures monitoring and feedback of these visits.

The Team also works with the families of the children in question.  As you can imagine, the problems which force a child onto the street or into very high risk situation often come from within the family itself.  As such, the team conducts regular workshops, visits and training opportunities for family members, in order to try and tackle some of the root causes behind the problems facing the child. 

This aspect of the work of Casa Alianza Nicaragua is vital, in order to ensure we are tackling and trying to provide solutions to as many aspects of the problems as possible.

So anyway, back to Friday.  On a Friday afternoon, the families in question come to visit the kids at our residential centers, and then the kids who are able to leave for the weekend, head off with them.  I always love to have the opportunity to speak to family members, and every now and again, it is possible to see a kid laughing and sharing some food with members of their family, all sitting round and sharing stories.  When this does happen on Friday, it really is a wonderful thing to be part of us.

Of course, it isn`t always a good time for all the kids.  There are often plenty of kids who are left feeling neglected and disappointed when their family has not been able to come to visit them. There are many parents who face the same substance addiction problems as their kids, and this explains their erratic behavior and sometimes inability to come and visit.  Other parents come from such poverty, that even though we cover their transport costs, it is too much for them to leave whatever subsistence work they are doing, to visit their kids.  In these cases, we have to work hard with the kids, to help take away this renewed feeling of neglect.  But for the one`s who are able to spend a bit of time with their family, and start the process for something that we might consider a `normal` and healthy family life, it really is a wonderful thing to be part of. 

So this Friday, I spent the morning coordinating a whole series of team activities, games and exercises requiring them to think, as a team ways to improve and plans to keep moving forward.  I then spent a large part of the afternoon speaking to some of the families, and sharing my insight into the necessary steps to help provide their kids with the values they need.

It was a very good Friday, and as I left in the evening, just before the daily storm rolled in, it was defiantly a great Friday feeling, and the Casa Alianza style makes it that much better. 

Love, Respect and Discipline....The Battle of the Colours

Discipline is a major issue when working with kids who come from such traumatic backgrounds as the one´s from the streets of Managua, or abuse and violence.

At the best of times, teenagers are not known to be the best behaved group of people in the world, but for kids who have lived on the streets, been abused and exploited, consumed large quantities of drugs, naturally their behaviors can be far more erratic. 

As members of staff at Casa Alianza we have to provide the genuine and healthy love and respect that these children need, but we also have to help install them with the values of discipline, so that they can to adapt properly to the normal rules of society around them.

It is no easy task, it requires a lot of patience and tolerance, and also innovative thinking, to be able to explain concepts of discipline of the kids, in a way which they can understand and aim to achieve. 

For the past three months I have been preparing a project in order to try and help with this process, and we have now been carrying it out for the past two weeks.  It is a simple concept.  I have divided the approximately 80 kids currently at our main residential protection centre into 4 separate teams (blue, white, yellow and green).  Each team voted for two captains and two vice-captains to take charge of running each team.  The idea is in every aspect of their daily routine, the kids can win points for their team.  Good behavior, decent use of vocabulary, support to their house-mates, active participation in the workshops etc, all wins points for the team.    The winning team at the end of each month will receive a prize.

Thus far, the project seems to be taking us in the right direction.  The kids are motivated and are starting to improve their discipline and values of cooperation in order to work together for the benefit of their team.  Members of staff have also become a bit less stressed as the kids are now helping us out a lot more without job, especially in terms of ensuring the discipline and correct behavior in their team. 

But the main reason I wanted to share this entry is because the project really is very, very simple, and it is working.  Yes, it is of course difficult working with kids with the behavioral problems as the one´s we work with, but at the same time, with the right commitment, finding sustainable solutions is not too difficult.  What I am also learning is that it is very possible to provide the love and respect that these kids so desperately need, but at the same time be a strict figure representing the discipline these kids needs.  The reason I like this project so much is that the kids get to work out for themselves the need to improve their own discipline.  Every morning I publish the list of the total scores for each team, they can see for themselves how their behavior is affecting the progress of their team, and that in itself provides a considerable sense of award or consequence.  It allows us to keep working with these kids in the most positive way possible. 

Love, respect and discipline.  It sounds difficult to achieve all of these things at the same time when dealing with troubled adolescents.  With patience, commitment and understanding, it is, in fact, really rather easy. 

A Tribute to our Teenage Mothers

This past week Nicaragua has been celebrating Mother´s Day.  It has been wonderful to have seen this day celebrated in the way it should be done, focusing far more on the spiritual side of things, and much less of the commercial emphasis that Mother´s Day has become in the UK.

At Casa Alianza Nicaragua we have two main residential homes.  Our ´Hilton Homes´cares for up to 94 street kids, victims of abuse, violence and exploitation.  Our other residential center, cares especially for teenage mothers and their babies and/or children.  The girls have a similar profile of being abused, neglected and abandoned.  The face the even worse burden of living in a country where machismo is the norm, and getting a teenage girl pregnant, beating her up, and then leaving her to fend for herself is far too common. 
Nicaragua is also the poorest country in Latin America, and as such, a baby born to an impoverished mother of 14 or 15 years old, with a violent father, means that both mother and child are faced by an exceptionally difficult situation.

The Casa Alianza Nicaragua Home for Teenage Mothers gives these girls a hope that they might not otherwise be able to find.  In the first place, the girls which choose to join us have access to food, a place to sleep, medical care, psychological support, education and support and constant love and understanding for both themselves and their baby.  The mothers are also able to attend school and the formal education system while the babies are cared for by the other girls at the center, and members of staff.  The mothers are also taught how to care for their babies, to provide the necessary hygiene, support and nurture that their child needs.  

I have now been at Casa Alianza Nicaragua for nearly 9 months, and in that time, I have spent a fair bit of time at the Teenage Mum´s Home.  It has been truly an honour to see these girls and their babies develop in a way we would hope for every mother and their children.  They are learning fast how to care for their children, and themselves, and are no longer forced into a role of subordination that Nicaraguan society in general all too often dictates against women and girls.

In many parts of Managua, it is all too possible to see tiny, dirty kids under the baking sun, begging at the traffic lights.  It is a tragic sight.  We can´t reach every kid and every underage mother, but for the one´s we do get to, both them and their child can have a real opportunity of a life that every mother and their children deserve.  During the process, there have been very hard moments, but as always, we keep working to do the very best we can, to offer the opportunities to as many as we can.

So in this entry, I pay a special tribute to the teenage mothers that I have had the honor to work with, and who have worked themselves so very hard to move their lives forward in a new direction, for themselves and their children.

I also pay tribute to all the young mothers who still face extraordinary difficulties, but as yet, have not come to know the protection and support they need.  I sincerely pray that they will find the opportunity for them and their baby, that they might be able to lead a life of love, support and understading, be it through Casa Alianza, their family, or other organisations. 
……………………..

On a personal note, I lost my own Mum 9 nearly years ago, when I was 16.  It was a very, very tough experience to go through, and it is still with me today.  But the experiences I gained, in particular that of doing what I can to really make the most of my life for myself and for other people, is, I believe, the main reason I am doing what I am doing right now, and the main motivator behind a great deal of my actions in the past 9 years.

So here on Nicaraguan Mother´s Day, I still give my thanks to Mum for making me the man I am today, and for all the strength she gave to me.  But also to my Dad for always supporting me and fostering that strength for me, which has been the other vital reason I am here doing what I do today.

Happy Mother´s Day.