Painting an environmental mural in the mountains.

This past weekend, my environmental club and I --along with the help of two other PCVs and a Honduran artist/volunteer from Santa Barbara-- painted a mural at my school. It turned out to be a surprisingly fun project, though a lot of work. The theme was "conserving the environment" but from there, the kids had free reign. We worked the entire weekend and on Monday too and Im very proud of the final product. Lots of them drew a standard fare of birds and flowers and trees, but there was some critical commentary too: one kid drew a skeleton of a poached animal, another a fish with a chain around its neck. All in all, they worked hard and had a good time and are happy about how the mural turned out. The teachers also seemed pleased. In fact, the social studies teacher approached me afterwards about repainting the world map, a project left by the last PCVs in my site which has become quite worn away. There is some paint left over, so we shall see...

My Environmental Club

One of the five after school clubs/classes that I lead during the week is my environmental club. There are 18 members aged 13-18 and we meet for a couple hours every Friday afternoon. A guy about my age in my town, Henry, volunteers to help me lead the sessions. And although Im certainly no expert in science/nature things, Ive found that other PCVs have been very enthusiastic to give advice and point me in the right direction. Not to mention my perennial friend Wikipedia. ;)

So Henry and I planned an 18 week calendar in which time we will be covering lots of big topics like local natural resources, organic agriculture, trash management and global warming. The idea is to give a brief lecture on the topic, no more than 30 minutes, just to explain the background info, then to go out and do an activity related to the topic.

For example, when we covered trash management, one week we had the kids bring in a week's worth of organic scraps from their kitchen and we made a compost pile in the school yard. We will use the compost, when it is ready in a couple months, when we plant our radishes during our discussion of organic agriculture.

The week following the compost pile, we were able to coordinate with the arrival of a group of 15 British high school students doing social work in Honduras to dig a mini-landfill for the school. It was tough work, digging the (3 meter deep!) hole, but now the school has an alternative to burning its trash.

We've also been on a bird-watching scavenger hunt, we've taken pictures of flowers and insects on a digital camera, we've planted flowers and other plants, and have made handicrafts out of recycling. Next week we are going on a hike in the cloud forest to look for birds and interesting trees. The week after we will be painting an environmental-themed mural at the school. Then the week after-- hopefully-- we will be planting trees in a deforested part of town.

It's been work that has kept me on my toes, considering how out of my element I've sometimes felt with this material, but the kids have been very enthusiastic and I believe it's important material. The hope is that these kids, who hold the future of the national park in their hands, will develop an awareness about how their actions affect their local environment and how that, in turn, affects their town.