We’ve been spending the last week of training in a local school. As youth development facilitators, we’ll be working with community partners to help improve opportunities available to youth. This may mean job and vocational training, health promotion, improving educational experiences, or business/ economic development for young adults. We’ll work not only with youth, but also with community organizations including the local government, health posts, and schools to help achieve our goals and empower local entities in development efforts.

Today’s training focused on the importance of non-formal education tactics, so our morning was filled with examples of how we could facilitate hands-on learning in fun and informational ways. This segment of training was a welcome change, and we were quite entertained. One of the highlights of the training was definitely learning how to build a fire and construct an improvised oven. We made banana bread using a fire and placing our pan inside a large pot on the fire. Evidently the first pot that was used was poorly made, because the fire burned right through the pan and led to very smoky banana bread. After this failure, we coated the pot in mud and the rest of the batches turned out pretty well. I’ll definitely be interested to see how cooking at site turns out. I love cooking, but I’m not sure how well my recipes would work in a fire-oven like that! Regardless, it would be an adventure.

In the afternoon we had a first-aid session, complete with firemen and CPR dolls. All firefighters here are volunteers, and don’t receive any sort of payment for their service. In fact, they don’t even have health insurance, which seems crazy. The firefighter who came to do first-aid with us informed us that there are only about 20 firefighters in Lima, which is a huge city. All firefighters work a regular job and volunteer only part time, so response to disasters is a huge issue because so few people are available at any given time. I can only imagine what would happen in the case of a national emergency.

The weather has been absolutely beautiful here, especially considering it is technically their winter. Most days start off a little chilly and cloudy, but it is almost always high 60s and sunny by midday. After training today we had a little running brigade around Chaclacayo. I think the locals are somewhat used to having gringos invade their town, but we still managed to get some interesting looks. When we got back we had yoga in the back lawn and an impromptu soccer game.