Escojo Este

What a difference a year makes. Last April, I took my first two jóvenes to the regional Escojo conference. And just this past weekend I took another two jóvenes to the 2010 Regional Escojo Conference. Instead of having an application process to choose who the lucky travelers would be, I picked the last two members of my youth group who have yet to travel with me. Now every single one of my twenty Escojo kids can say that I took them to a conference where they met new friends and got to see a part of their country that they might not ever have had the opportunity to see. Last year I had to beg and plead with the kids’ parents for them to grant permission for them to leave with me. This year the parents didn’t ask me a single question. They completely trusted me to travel with their children and to arrive back safely in Baoba.

This Escojo conference was amazing. And it was mainly due to the effort of the regional coordinators. Regional coordinators are Dominican youth who have already graduated from Escojo and now they take on the volunteers’ role as group leaders. This is a great example of a Peace Corps success story because the main goal of Peace Corps is sustainability. We want our projects to continue after the volunteers leave. We want Dominicans to take charge of their own future and lead their own.

In this conference there were about 75 people: 10 volunteers, 10 regional coordinators, and 50 teenagers. The regional coordinators were in charge of giving all of the charlas (the theme of the conference was how to prevent early pregnancy), of animating the kids so they wouldn’t get bored, of serving the food, and of keeping the kids well-behaved and they did a great job. We volunteers were able to just sit back and relax because everything ran so smoothly.

At the conference, there was barely any free time for the kids. They heard charlas on teenage pregnancy, condoms, protecting the environment, conflict resolution, creativity, and communication. The kids were also given an egg that they had to take care of during the weekend like it was their baby. They couldn’t leave the egg alone, and of course they couldn’t let the egg break. Out of 25 pairs, only 9 eggs died, which I thought was pretty impressive. We also had a talent show and a bonfire, complete with roasted marshmallows and s’mores.