PWB Nicaragua – El Barrilete – León – Blog 3

Outreach Work – León

By Jacob Hirsch-Holland

One of the most commonly used words so far on this trip has been ‘project’.  We are on the ‘PWB Nicaragua 2013 Project’, which involves working on three projects in three towns/cities, each project is based at already established projects, and within each project we have many opportunities to do outreach work at many other projects.  You get the picture.

As most of our time and energy is spent focussing on the place where we work continuously for 4 weeks, it is quite refreshing and exciting to venture out to other groups of children around the city (Léon) to share our skills with them.  In our daily routine of traveling to El Barrilete to work with our regular group of children, we have (or at least try to have) a certain amount of structure and various systems in place to make an attempt at getting the best results possible.  And this is what I mean when I say it is “refreshing” to do outreach work.

Workshop-wise it is a chance to have a bit more freedom with the way we teach; an opportunity to maybe try out new stuff or teach a skill we don’t get a chance to within our daily teaching regime.  Sometimes we might just play for an hour with the children having a go at juggling, hoop, staff, songs, and silliness.  But sometimes it can take you by surprise, as yesterday did.  We (Bags, Emily, and I) visited a centre for ‘niños desfavorecidos’, called Las Chaviladas, where we were greeted excitedly by a group of boys aged between 8 and 13, who were desperate to show off their already fairly competent juggling and diabolo skills.  Many of them could juggle 3 balls and most of them could confidently throw and catch a diabolo.  It might not sound like much but it was fantastic to see such rapid progression in our hour session with them, which was possibly down to the amount of practice they had had at the basics, without the opportunity to have any tricks taught to them before.

Part of me feels a bit sad that we don’t get to spend more time with more children (one month with one group, when there are so many) but obviously it is important to have a significant amount of time with some to be able to leave them with something that will last.  And this is an important part of PWB; the legacy.  Which is another wonderful thing about the outreach work.  At first glance it can seem that this extra work is just a fleeting moment of excitement for the children involved but our experience at Las Chaviladas shows anything but.  They already had a small amount of equipment (homemade juggling balls and some broken diabolos) and some basic skills.  So off the back of that, this ‘fleeting moment of excitement’ has brought them far more.  A few more tricks is one thing but there are two others that are far more important and, to me, demonstrate what a big part of PWB is about.  One is that the children were clearly hugely inspired and this is something that can last for a very long time.  And the other is the connection between Las Chaviladas and PWB.

We came to Léon to work at El Barrilete and we knew nothing about any of the other groups we have seen.  Now there is a connection with so many more children and if PWB is ever in Léon again, places like Las Chaviladas will definitely get return visits, hopefully with more organisation and more time.

So I feel like I should come to some sort of conclusion at the end of these ramblings, but I can’t.  All I will say is that I am pleased to have written about all of this without using the word ‘project’.

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