My last week of travels

I just returned from a week on a beautiful farm in the mountains of the Sonsonate region of El Salvador for the mid-year strategic planning meeting of my organization. Sounds boring, but because Centro Bartolomé de las Casas is founded on methodologies of popular education and self-care, we incorporated dancing, stretching, hiking, and a process of biblio-drama to enter into the intense programming discussions we had to get through. I had the opportunity to assist one of my co-workers in the process of facilitating the planning meetings for all the programs (Masculinities, Mental Health, Youth Leaders, and Biblio-Theology) and learned a lot from him about the complex process of program development and planning.

Although I am involved in a number of projects here at Centro Bartolomé, the work has gotten off to a slow start. I’ve been feeling the frustrations that come along with the limitations of a 10 week internship, and wishing I could stay longer. One of my projects is assisting my coworker Deisy with the Mental Health and Living Memory program. Last weekend I went with her to co-facilitate a workshop with survivors of war atrocities in Arcatao, by the border of Honduras in the north of El Salvador. The workshop is part of a research project about Religion, Gender and Memory, with the goal of creating a documentary and involving a group of survivors in a process of healing and sharing of collective memories. In the workshop, we incorporated visualization activities and dance with more a more intense process of creating a timeline of all the important massacres, killings, and mobilizations during the war. I found myself very emotionally affected by the stories this group of mostly elderly men and women told. I was also incredibly inspired both by the level of organization of the community and the effectiveness of the methodologies implemented by Deisy in helping this community heal from intense trauma and loss.

The other major project I’m working on is helping the Masculinities program evaluate the impacts of their Equinox School (which involves group of men and adolescent males in a process of exploring the meanings of masculinity and impacts on gender-based violence). So far, I’ve started organizing and photographing what they call the silouettes of the Hegemonic model of Masculinity. These silhouettes are drawings of what each group interprets as what it means to be a man both physically and emotionally, and what roles men are supposed to play. It’s an ambitious project, but really interesting to compare how different groups represent the model. I hope I can give back as much to Centro Bartolomé and the communities they work with as they have shared with me.