Quepos monthly achievement February 2017

Only way is forward

Objective
GVIs objective of developing communities and increasing access to education is our primary
goal, this is caused by projects changing their short term and mid term objectives in order to
eventually reach our long term objective for that hub. This cannot be done without the
development of the project. The flexibility and adaptation is a huge strength in order to change
to suit the communities needs.

Summary
We believe the community now are starting to see us in a different and better way. Our
engagement in the community and our enthusiasm regarding the childrens education is now
being shown. We are no longer just volunteers who look after the children but we are now being
seen as the organisation we are, driving to help those in need and united by passion for positive
change in all the community.

Report
The progression of the Project in El Cocal is clearly
being assisted by our increase in lesson time.
Whereas previously our volunteers were only on
project for four hours a day, teaching two classes
of two hours each, once in the morning and once
in the afternoon. We have now doubled the time
we spend in El Cocal on Project with our classes
now being lengthened to three hours twice a day
with us eating lunch on project, totalling at 8 hours.
This development means we have more time to
teach the children about the topic of the week and
has allowed them to understand it better as we can
reinforce and express the issue we wish to educate
them about. Additionally, it also means the result
of coming to class after the lesson has begun is not
so drastic for the education of the child as they will
have not of missed as much as they would of if the
classes were only two hours. As mentioned
previously this also has the benefit of allowing the
topic of the week to be absorbed easier and
creates more of a foundation so that the following
lesson will be more effective. It allows our volunteers to refer back to points made in the last
lesson to help the children understand key concepts better with knowledge continually building
each day with ease. For example last week we focussed on the topic of recycling, we were able
to individually explain the 3 steps to recycling (reduce, reuse and recycle) and dedicate a lesson
to each of these areas with the ultimate lesson revising reduce, reuse and recycle. By the end of
the week we were confident that the children had fully grasped these concepts and were able to
explain what was important about each one and how they could assist recycling in their own way.

It was not only an increase in lesson time,

which was a major development towards
the achievement of our object. This month
we are saw a massive surge in the number
of children coming to our classes. Our
definition of a good day has now been
changed for the better. Our classes can
now get as big as 20 children per class. This
alteration is extremely exciting and is a
major success for the staff and the
volunteers. Although this does not happen
on a daily basis, we are still extremely
proud as it means more children are
interested in coming to our classes and
learning whilst having fun. We get the
excitement of seeing new faces every
couple of days and eventually we hope that
we can provide a full day of education to all
the Children in El Cocal. However, we are
realistic and realise this goal will not be
achieved for a while. With more time and more children come more planning and more teaching
and we cannot do this without our fantastic volunteers. Kirsten, Yelena and our long term intern
Jessica to name a few of our family who have left us this month and without their dedication we
couldnt have done this. They will be sorely missed and we are thrilled to welcome new members
to our family this week.

When we have not been teaching this week, we are becoming involved and interact with the
community in different ways. Last week saw GVIs involvement in the making and selling of a
soup in order to raise funds for the El Cocal community committee. This is the second soup GVI
has participated in this year. We aim to help the community committee in anyway we can in
order to help them help the community. In saying that we also helped the committee with some
surveying in El Cocal. This surveying took part for a few reasons. Firstly, it was to assess how many
people were permanent residents in El
Cocal so we could understand the complete
size and growth. Understanding this would
help us realise whilst undergoing
community development projects how
many people we would be facilitating for.
Second it was to create a map of El Cocal to
establish security and safety in the event of
an emergency. The committee would be
able to know how many houses were in El
Cocal, where the escape routes would be
and how the people should act in the
danger of an emergency.