Friday August 31/12 update
I was awake at 3am with my mind churning over ideas for a
big meeting at 10 at the Kookaburra Café to determine the vision and focus of
the Amigos English School
moving forward. We were supposed to
have received ideas from everyone via email, etc but I never received a
thing. It bothered me that this meeting
was to include all volunteers, teachers, Community reps, City reps, new
volunteers, and especially the Hearts Of Gold Foundation where we are looking
for funding.
I emailed everyone at 3:47 hoping for some response and
offering to chair the meeting if necessary as first impressions were
crucial. I spent hours fine-tuning a
detailed agenda in case I chaired the meeting, and finally at 8:34am I sent
everyone a simplified proposed Agenda outline since I was leaving to connect
with an earlier appointment.
I caught the #3 and was at the Kookaburra by 9:30 so I got
all prepared and met the owners, Rick and Carol Smith, formerly of the Parkland
area in Calgary . Rick and Carol are looking to donate some old
laptops to us but they haven’t got their residency yet so their container would
be at least 2 months away. Rick is also
interested in helping out.
10am rolled around and I was still the only person in the
room. I found out that our group had
been having a meeting outside on the sidewalk.
When they came in, I asked who was going to chair the meeting and they
said Miguel, so I just put away all my hard work and let them have their way.
The five founding members, Miguel, Chris, myself, Tom and
Linda were joined by two Community members, both named Patricio. Melinda from Hearts Of Gold was there as well
as two new volunteers, a Cuencano named Ivan and an Englishwoman named
Christine. Conspicuous by their absence
were our teachers but we were told that Victoria
had advised us that she had a conflicting appointment.
Linda had put together a package for everyone including the
material I had provided and it was well received. They had made changes to one
page of mine that made no sense to me, changing the name of the Founder to the
name of the neighborhood,.. and then causing a spelling error on the Mission
Statement. Oh well….
Miguel spoke of many grandiose plans, including opening the
school all day which caught all of us by surprise as that would be WAY down the
road requiring many, many volunteers and loads of coordination.
Christine was a fountain of great suggestions and I could
easily see her taking the reins of the school and making it run well. There
was talk of changing the name of our organization to include neither English
nor School which is fine with me.
Many of the ideas I wanted to discuss just went by the
wayside because I was not interested in hijacking the meeting. The good thing is that Melinda indicated that
she would recommend that we qualify for funding from the Hearts Of Gold
(started by Calgarians Richard & Sheryle Verkely) http://ecuazon.com/heartsofgold/.
We made a short list of immediate needs, being a storage
cabinet, a large screen monitor, and supplies and snacks. Then we need to get cracking to get someone
to donate us some high speed Internet.
The meeting ended up with many conversations going on at
once so we finally exchanged emails and set a date to meet at the school on
Wednesday at 10am to narrow down some direction for activities, such as a long
term goal of making a float for the Christmas Eve parade.
As we were leaving, I noted two ladies in the restaurant
that I knew, one of them being Nancee, an English teacher from our Spanish
class so we got talking. Nancee has
taught English in China
and says she has many useful materials so she will join us Wednesday too. Today was a success, just for picking up
four new volunteers.
I decided to walk through El Centro as I had not been there in weeks
and I wanted to see where they had had the fire next to the Cathedral. The building maybe didn’t seem as white
today, but I really couldn’t see any outward evidence of that major fire. I guess it helps when the building is
concrete.
Upon arrival at home I was dismayed to get an email from
Christopher, our other teacher, saying that his MS had deteriorated so badly
here that he and Pamela were making an emergency return to the US. Their enthusiasm and expertise will certainly
be missed, and we wish them well.
I had also stopped to see how Raoul is doing with his building
construction and it is really progressing.
He hopes to have the first two floors ready for occupancy by the end of
September.
That was today’s excitement. Please see all photos at souvenircuenca.blogspot.com. Hugs to all.
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