Friday August 31, 2012

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.