Hi everyone back home, this is Brendan the Venezuela Team Leader…just a quick message to update you on all the January team have been up to since arriving on the Caribbean Coast 4 weeks ago…

As discussed the first week was dedicated to orientation, understanding of the area and getting to terms with the rules and regulations of camp life and local living standards too. After talking about the local do’s and don’ts it was time to see it all for real.

We first took the students into town by local transport so that they too could be independent when required, and showed them around the city emphasizing on the safety advice from the meeting earlier in the day. The following day after a Spanish assessment we walked around the village of Playa Colorada. This was an important walk as I was able to show the group a typical Venezuelan village and the social problems we are dealing with, but also able to specify on our immediate project objectives, I was also able to show the group shopping options and recreation opportunities in the village.
By Mid week we were ready to start specifying on project 1, so we visited the Island a couple of times both by motor boat and by kayak. These visits were important for us to gain a basic understanding for the project ahead. We as a group were ready for meeting 1 of project 1.
Meeting 1 to discuss; role distribution, work schedule, aims and objectives, methods.
The aims and objectives were made to be achievable and teams with job roles were then made. After  the meeting the group essentially split-up and got busy.
The aims and objectives were to motivate the local community into a drastic change of attitude regarding littering. We decided to motivate  through education. We went to the school and preformed a play at assembly and gave-out question sheets to all the kids – this was then supervised by the teachers. We cleaned the beach over a couple of days and documented our work, the aim was to build an informative poster and welcome sign, to be practical we accompanied this educational advertising with a rotating bin.
Over week 2 and 3, this promotion work was done and the bin and signs were put up. We did it, we achieved our goals on time.
Weekends: The group have spent most of their weekend time chilling and socialising with the other groups current based at the Jakera Club, they have done one activity all together which was abseiling at the near-by water fall. They have also done a local hike with us and received over 40 hours of Spanish classes.

We’re all really happy here with the way the first team is going and feel we have got off to a very good start. Project two, is Jakera Club, where we will be hosting the local youth club.
Happy Days!