Pastoral Juvenil

In order to get more experience working with youth groups in the Dominican Republic, three other volunteers and I have been assigned to help a local group here plan some type of activity by the end of the five weeks. This activity can be pretty much anything -- a community service project to clean up trash or plant trees, a sports tournament, or an arts project.

Our group is the Pastoral Juvenil en the barrio of Las Flores. This group is Catholic, and working with them has been extremely interesting. They told us that there are about 30 members in the group, including 10 girls; However, at the meetings there are usually only about 10 members and they are all guys. Also the ages of the guys in this "youth" group range from about 14 to 28 years old.

The group is extremely religious. We go to their meetings (there is one every night of the week, but we only go to about 2 per week) so that we can plan service projects, yet every meeting we have gone to is only a worship service. This is great because the guys conduct their own service by playing the guitar and drums, singing songs, reading from the Bible and then giving testimonies on the passages read. I really enjoy the services because the songs are pretty and the services are interactive, however there is no group planning, and us Peace Corps volunteers just want to do our job and plan some sort of activity.

Last Sunday we went to our scheduled meeting at 4:30, and surprise! It was a funeral. The four of us were sitting on the front pew when all of a sudden four men walk into the church carrying a casket. We were shocked, and tried to slyly move to a pew that was farther back in the church so that we wouldn't look as out of place as we felt. I'm sure everyone was wondering why four gringas were sitting in on that funeral.

Yesterday we were finally able to plan something: a movie night to raise funds for some other event that we have yet to plan. They want to show a movie on a projector for all of the kids in the community and charge them 20 pesos to see the movie and then more more for snacks and drinks. I'm hesitant to say that our group is going to follow through on the plan, but maybe these boys will surprise me.