New Tidings

Hello everyone,

At risk of stating the obvious, many things have happened and will continue to happen.

Yesterday I taught some English with Eider using the 7 habits for one half of the class and simple conversational verses for the other half. Eider also taught with my help about sentence structure, and verbs, and descriptive words and all those technical things which I do not remember. This English class that I and Eider gave for Yilbert, Yenny and Giraldo (a policeman, who requested this class).

I will write more when more comes of it.

Last Monday we had Day of the Leader, which comes with an Ascension Ceremony. The ascension ceremonies performed on the Day of the Leader include a lot of marching and following commands, as a sort of show and sign of respect and deep meaning to the ranks that some of the kids are ascending to. It reminds me much of the military, where aspiring soldiers ascend up the ranks because of virtue and hard work.

I will write more about that later.

Some days ago we had a discussion about things. One thing was that the kids often come here to play and be entertained in some way. So for example the girls especially like to build the pyramids with the stacking cups and collapse them over and over and over... and usually they do it with a lot of screaming and without any apparant purpose. Other times the kids play monopoly or chess and usually just for entertainment without any end in mind, without any purpose. In a small move to more productive learning there is now a rule that no games are allowed before 2pm. I was also asked to remove all modern synthetic music from the computors to enforce the new rule that no bad music is allowed on the computers of Yo Creo En Mi (and also no images depicting violence). (bad music is the kind of stuff you can find on MTV and TMF and in Discos and often on the Radio). I put some of my favourite music in its place. The kids generally don´t like it... but still... the hymn of the "US military medley" seems to be appreciated by atleast a few of the kids. They voluntarily listened to it for atleast 5 minutes. But I have the feeling I or we may get some retaliation in some shape or form, for removing the kids music.

Regardless of this resistance, I feel the air has cleared a lot now that such terrible music is no longer on the premises. What a relief!

It also came up that we want to get the official permission from the parents, so the kids have been told they must convince their parents to sign a paper that gives us permission to have the kids here. This is to counteract  any idea that we are forcing the kids to come here against the parents will. We were a bit afraid that requiring this written permission from the parents would be hard, as some will simply not be motivated enough to come here for their kids. So instead we the volunteers go to many of the parents who dont come to us. In this process we also gather some contact details, so we can contact the parents if something happens to a kid while said kid is at the foundation.

This issue came up after it was mentioned that some of the kids try to get out of attending school by lying to the teachers that YCEM is forcing them to come. 

I´ll relate from a lot of notes I took about plans that Walter related. Great plans which are surprisingly and refreshingly realistic and hopeful.

Ill start with the fact that YCEM started just on Sundays inside a school. There was no rent to pay, there was no communal dining. There was very little. It started very cheap. Over time YCEM emigrated to a much more expensive model which seemingly isnt getting proportionally better results. Walter wants to expand the Club, and Carlos & Esperanza will try in Cali. They go to schools and show videos about the 7 habits and try to see if they can convince the teachers to teach the kids the 7 habits.
Another important point of new clubs is fun.

Also, some of the kids have learned enough to be able to do some of the things that Walter is presently doing. It is Walters dream that the kids run and manage the clubs for the most part.

Many mistakes have been made that have been grown out of. YCEM used to give caps out for free, and because of that the kids would be careless with them and lose them. Now they will have to earn the caps and so because they earn the caps they take care of them. The main YCEM club will be the example for all clubs across Colombia and the world. The 7 habits and the teachings of YCEM are univeral and must remain that way. Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Confucionists and Atheists alike can accept the 7 habits and apply them and transform their lives with them.

YCEM gets no more money then we need in order to grow. And now it appears to normal people we have no money left over and that is true. We don't need more money to grow. We have the kids and they have unlocked much of their power, we can use them to expand. The kids who are on fire for the cause of I Believe In Me are that which makes the whole club so valuable! New clubs will start humbly, by showing videos to teachers. It will be especially excellent if the kids do this and make presentations with their own voice too, because it shows the theory in the practice in the lives of 13 year old kids who are teaching leadership. 

Even if the kids come and go, so long as their hearts are touched they will remember and may years later as adults think back... and seek... and want to start a club too.

Will write more later