… prevent break-ups of families ... a void risks like drugs …
… express ourselves like with art ...
... evaluate the important facets that affect our lives:
faith, crisis in our country,politics, etc ...
… prevent violence among youth, within families,
among gangs, and against women …
----Strait from the minds of the youth in Los Naranjos come these ideas about themes that they hope to discuss during our year together in the process of youth formation. Today was the first realization of what we have been planning during the last few weeks, and of what I have been looking forward to for several months: the initial meeting in the communities with the youth to begin the process of formation. Some would say FINALLY!, but I can recognize that this culmination is coming at just the right time: my use of the language has progressed, I know at least a bit about the reality of El Salvador and the base communities, my colleague Miguel and I are clicking together as a “team”, and I’ve learned some about popular education as a method of engaging youth in a participatory and dialogical process of developing what they know, expressing it, and acting upon it.
When we arrived in the community, Los Naranjos, it just so happened that another organization was using the “community building”, so we “just had” to meet with the youth under the shade of a giant tree. It was a great setting for the meeting, a little relaxing, a nice breeze, and we had already planned on using “natural” materials for an activity. Los Naranjos is a very rural community of 20 families, with no electricity and a long walk to the river, where most people are subsistence farmers. If the youths want to progress to high school, the nearest one is in the larger community an hour away (if you can find a vehicle, 2-3 hours on foot). I had been to the community several times because this is where, Angel, one of my best friends here lives and serves the community with her sustainable agriculture skills. The youth—12 were present at the meeting today—are younger on average that the youth that we work with in other communities. One young one was 11, and most were 13 to 16, with the leader being 20.
The goals of the meeting today involved getting to know the youth and introducing ourselves as people who will accompany the youth during this year, introducing the workshops about formation and receive the input of the youth about themes, and listen to the youth’s ideas about FUNDAHMER’s relations with the youth in the community in the past and in the upcoming year. I had spent some time in the past week scouring some books I have for suggestions of fun “dynamicas” (or games that can have a didactic purpose) to get the youth active and participating to begin and then to have a chance to present themselves to the group.
I have a couple cute pictures from the day, but someone neglected to take one of me in the position of a head-but with the tee-tiny 11-year old as we were “frozen” in this position while we shared a fact about ourselves that the other didn’t know :-). The “meat” of the program today for me began as I guided a process in which the youth did a quick analysis of their reality as youth in the community of Los Naranjos in El Salvador. Then, based on their ideas about the challenges and risks of their reality, the youth thought about and shared themes that they would like, and deem important, to talk about during our monthly workshops. 
In small groups, the youth first brainstormed about theme ideas, and then to practice exploring a theme more in depth as well as to engage their creativity, they designed a “symbol” for their most interesting or favorite theme. A group collected the containers of different products, like juice cans and bags emptied of their rice, laying around their community as trash to present to the group the dilemma of the increasing cost of basic foods and other goods. Another group designed stick figures, literally “stick figures” made out of sticks from our shade tree, to talk about how they wanted to not only learn how to be better individuals (values, self-esteem, etc) but also operate better in groups (organization of themselves as youth, teamwork, conflict management, etc.)“…to realize that they too ‘know things’ they have learned in their relations with the world and with other people” (Paulo Freire, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"). Today, as we began the formation workshops, I wanted to design the time we spent together to begin a pattern of creativity, active participation, critical thinking, and dialogue, all along the route to liberation. I mean liberation in the sense of having the life-giving ability (and awareness of that ability, critical among the oppressed like youth in poor communities in El Salvador) to unveil their reality through reflection and dialogue and (re-)create their reality through committed involvement. (Along these lines, I liked the title of this blog today, which is from another quote from Paulo Freire.) What this means in practical terms, like what I think about when I design the workshops, is that I will not act as just an “expert” on a particular theme who “fills” the minds of the youth. Rather, I know that the youth already have within them the ability to work to change their conditions. I will work to create a space where the youth feel safe and empowered to think critically, express their thoughts, dialogue with their peers (the other youth alongside them in their struggle), and hopefully eventually act upon their new-found consciousness. Though sometimes it would be far easier to just to say something I “know,” I will work to create conditions during the workshops that encourage the youth themselves to think critically, dialogue among each other, and generate for themselves how their reflections and knowledge could actually lead to action and change.
