LiTeRaCy CaMpAiGn... an unforgettable experience

Well, this year all the fifth courses had to participate in the program to help the people who didn’t finish the school or the high school, this program is called “Programa de Educación Básica para Jóvenes y Adultos”. This experience was amazing, although we had to do this on Saturdays’ afternoons. First of all, we had a training with the students of sixth courses; this training lasted two days, but it was funny, because we did some activities that we used to do when we were little children. Later, we had to look for people who wanted to enter this program organized by the government; it was difficult but with effort and with our parents’ help, each student got 3 people. The great day came, and on October 18th, we had our first day teaching people. At first, we didn’t know how to do this, but thanks to our teacher Jorge Campaña, we developed correctly the activities that we had to do. Unfortunately, this was a rainy day and not many people came. We did well the first day.
We were already separated in different groups. The first one had to help children to do their homework, the other one had to take care of the babies, and the rest of the groups had to teach the people who were registered in this program. The first Friday, we took the tests to the people who were there, and having had the results, this people were distributed in different modules. The first module was for the people who didn’t know how to write or read; the second the third and the fourth ones were for the people who didn’t finish the school. So, one week later, we started teaching the people, while the students of sixth courses prepared the materials for us. All the weeks we had to give a planning sheet in order to get a better organization and to prepare the class one or two days before. I was in the group that had to help children with their homework; Pame Romero, Montserrat Rosales, Sopi Rosero, Vero Salazar, Luis Santamaría, Mariale Vallejo, Francisco Yánez and Alvarito Zambrano were also in my group. At first it was stressful because children made a lot of noise and we had to control them, but with the time I got used to it. There were nine people in my group, and each one of us had to help two or three children. Unfortunately, we had to give one planning sheet per each child. It was a hard work.
We also organized programs in some special occasions, for example, in Christmas Day, we sang some carols and the people participated in different contests. In Saint Valentine’s Day, Dany Arteaga sang, Pao Carrera danced and we gave them flowers and some chocolates made by us. But after we came back from vacations, many people didn’t come, and one of them was my student. I had some problems with her, because she wanted me to pay her five dollars to go to this program; I wasn’t going to do that, so she didn’t come anymore.

Some months later, we had to change the groups, so my group this time went to teach people in Module 3. The people here are amazing, because they always want to learn new things, specially one man, Benito, who is in his sixties but he is always participating and studying for the tests, I think he is the best student in our module. We had to teach Grammar, Math, Natural Science, Social Science and English, so two people gave one subject while the others helped our students.
For the Teacher’s Day, our students called us to a small meeting, and here they thanked us for helping them and they gave us some cake and soda. It was impressive that I was almost going to cry. And four Saturdays before we were going to finish with this arduous work, the teacher Jorge Campaña gave us some information to do the final report; it was a long task so we did it during two weeks. We gave the first draft on May 6th. After this, we did a small program in order to celebrate Mother's Day and the people did enjoy it.
During the next week, the teacher Jorge Campaña checked our reports. On May 16th we had our last day of this hard work, so we told our students to be on time on May 30th in order to give them their certificates. Finally, we gave the last draft of our reports and this comming saturday we will be having a small program, and with this, we will be closing this Literacy Campaign.

This was a satisfactory experience, because we helped people to finish the school, and also, to make their dreams come true. They were very grateful with us when we finished with this work. In my opinion, I learned many things during these months: I learned more about the different cultures in our country, and the best one is that I made new friends, not only with the adults, also with the children, because now when they see me they say ‘Hey! Hello Gaby!’ and I feel happy with this. So I want to thank my parents for helping me with this hard task, my friends for those special moments during these months, our teachers for helping us to do the right work, and specially to our students, because without them we wouldn’t have experienced this.