The past few days have been incredibly busy with not alot of down time so now it is time to play catch up on the blog.

As we have spent the past two days in the community my mind is full of many thoughts and emotions.

On Tuesday we met with all the mother leaders in the afternoon to hear from them what has been happening in Rinconada del Sol during the past year. They shared some of the highlights and some of the challenges. We shared about what has been happening at UC and also together we talked about our week together and what we were going to do together.

It was amazing to see how quickly the women opened up and shared their hearts about their community.

The biggest highlight this year in their community is the addition of the ludoteca.   This is the building right beside the community centre it is set up as a drop in centre for young children.   It is almost like a preschool in the sense that it has centres or areas for specific learning.  The biggest thing that we have noticed so far is that the ludoteca is a place where children can learn through play.  The ludoteca is supervised  by the mother leaders in the community.   There is a centre for reading, a centre for games and puzzles, an area for story telling and music and area for playing with toys.  It is very evident that this play centre adds alot of structure through play to the children’s lives.

                                          The Very Hungry Caterpillar (in Spanish – thnx Becca!)

Family violence is the area that this group of leaders is most committed to working on.  The shared with us how difficult it is because it is often not easy to talk about violence (whatever kind it may be) in the home.

Another addition in the community is the Community Leaders group.   This group consists of a few of the mother leaders and  some of the men in the community who are leaders.   We met with them in the evening and heard about what their dreams and goals for the community are.

It was very evident and encouraging to me today, to see how this community has grown and changed in the past two years since I was here and how the leaders in the community are facing challenging issues and working on them in order to help their community become an even more strong and healthy community.

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