I started "real" work this week. By this I mean I went to the Youth Center on Monday and looked through past PCV´s work to get ideas for what I´d like to do. My schedule probably won´t be finalized for a little while because I´m working with a number of organizations and I need to figure out the times they need me before I try to dive into teaching a class or scheduling a regular activity.

Yesterday I met with my counterpart from the women´s organization in another town on Maio. She´s a member of the women´s group in which I will be helping. In the next few weeks, we´ll put together a meeting of all the women who want to participate in Calheta and talk about why I´m here, what is Peace Corps, and what the women want to get out of their group. It sounds like they want to be more official and have on-going projects, maybe related to domestic abuse, sexual abuse, health, opportunities for women, and empowerment. I´m really excited to work with them. If anyone has any connections with women´s groups in the states or internationally that may be able to help with materials, information on these topics, I would really appreciate it. After sitting down and talking, we went over to the camara and met with the variadors- basically like appointed heads of departments. The camara in Maio has 4- one for sports, social activities, environment, and urban planning. The variador for sports also is the point person for the youth center so I will be working a lot with him.

In the past, volunteers at the youth center have taught English or computers, tutored kids, and had art classes or other sorts of activities. I´m thinking of maybe doing a class on world diversity with an emphasis on a different country each week and an art project for each country. For example, if the theme of the week were Chile, we could make rainsticks out of papertowel roles, beans, and toothpicks. Í´m pretty excited to jump in but I need to talk more with the people I work with and get everything approved and figure out schedules. The scheduling I think will take the longest since I´m still trying to figure out what time/days are best for each group.

The third group I´ll be working with is a micro-credit organization. I´m not exactly sure where they are located or the specifics of what they do but I´m going sometime this week to check it out and talk to the person in charge.