Celebrating International Day of People with Disabilities

Yesterday, August 23, Cantera celebrated International Day of People with Disabilities (August 25) at El Guis, a home here in Ciudad Sandino for people with mental and physical disabilities. With spaces for music and dance, drawing and painting, and piñata-making, organizations, families, and friends came together to celebrate the creativity of disabled persons. 

Specifically, Mojuv, Cantera's youth movement here in Ciudad Sandino, organized the music area, bringing percussion instruments and a sound system and celebrating the day through music and dance. While children, teens and adults were given the opportunity to create rhythms with the instruments and participate in the many activities offered, families and friends of these disabled persons were able to celebrate their forms of expression and stand in solidarity with them.

The World Health Organization defines “disability” as “an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. An impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations.”*

Cantera will be acknowledging and reflecting on International Day of People with Disabilities throughout the week, celebrating the diversity of humanity and pushing to give disabled persons more rights within society. We here in Ciudad Sandino encourage our friends in different parts of the world to observe and celebrate International Day of Persons with Disabilities with us.

*http://www.who.int/topics/disabilities/en/

Flooding Crisis in Ciudad Sandino, August 19 and 20th

Heavy rains in Ciudad Sandino this week have caused a lot of destruction, and several families have lost their homes.  Members of our Youth Movement and Communications Team created this slideshow, which contains more information on the situation:
Afectacion Por Lluvias en Ciudad Sandino

Cantera hosts second annual Theater Festival

This past Sunday, August 8, Cantera hosted the second annual Theater Festival here in Ciudad Sandino. With five groups participating from Cantera and Movitep in Managua, the audience of around 250 enjoyed performances, written and performed by the groups themselves, on different themes such as adolescent pregnancy and sexual health, HIV/AIDS awareness, and the environment. People of all ages participated in the festival, whether performing or watching, with theater groups comprised of children, adolescents, teens, and adults.

The Theater Festival at Cantera and the groups that perform are based around Popular Theater, or Theater of the Oppressed, a methodology that uses theater as a means of delivering social messages to the audience according to their specific reality and creating a space for critical thinking, reflection, and dialogue.

 

Mural for a Clean, Green, Community

This week, we are finishing up the mural about environmental protection, and a clean and green municipality. The green part in the center is a map of Ciudad Sandino, with a recycling symbol, surrounded by some animals native to the region. The message of the mural is that together, we can live in harmony with nature and save our community. When we protect the environment, we promote our own well-being, and the well-being of future generations.

Creating Spaces for Personal Growth

Crecimiento Personal (Personal Growth) is a space created for each expression group at Cantera (theater, music, dance, environmental brigades, and the communications team) where members come together monthly to reflect, dialogue, and share different parts of their reality. In these spaces, youth and children share a common ground where they reflect on their reality, participate in activities that encourage critical thinking, and discuss different themes like self-esteem, sexuality and gender equality, and non-violence.

Cantera offers the youth of Ciudad Sandino courses in different forms of expression that include music, dance, theater, karate, an environmental group and a communications group. Within each group is the potential for youth to participate, learn a skill, and begin to realize their own potential. Following the popular education methodology of Paulo Freire, Crecimiento Personal offers the youth of these expression groups a space to reflect on their lived-reality, analyze root-causes of problems in their reality, and find ways to create change and social justice in an empowering way.

This photo is from a recent Personal Growth space with children, facilitated by Anabell (R) and Oscar of the Technical Team of the center here and Jesuit Volunteer, Lauren (L).  The focus of the session was on identifying positive values the children hope to live out.

What's Your Ecological Footprint?

With the Youth Movement in recent weeks, we've had workshops with youth leaders to talk about how we can best educate others in the community about preserving the environment by correctly disposing of trash. Trash dumping in Ciudad Sandino, and Nicaragua in general, is a big problem. Many people burn trash, which contributes to air pollution and public health issues, or dump trash into water.

Many visitors to Nicaragua are appalled to see people throw plastic bags out of buses or cans on the ground--a problem that desperately needs to be addressed, and which some groups, including the Youth Movement are working to change.

In other countries, like the U.S., sometimes pollution is less visible (less trash on the streets in many places), but the overall environmental impact of people's lifestyles are much greater.  If everyone were to live like the average American, we would need more than 4 worlds to support us all!  If we all lived like the average Nicaraguan, we would need less than 0.21 worlds!

The Youth Movement is concerned with lessening our ecological footprint, to preserve the plant for the future.

What's your ecological footprint?  How can you make changes in your life to live more sustainably?

Take a short quiz to check our your Ecological Footprint

And see some Tips on How to Reduce your Ecological Footprint 

Nicaragua: Facts at a Glance, from Witness for Peace (2008)

Nica at a Glance 2008