You'll actually look forward to your morning commute. Life is calling. How far will you go? Learn more about the Peace Corps

Monday, April 18, 2011

2do Foro Juvenil Parlamentario

After a stressful week of completing voter registration and finalizing logistics for Saturday's forum, the day finally arrived for the election.

I invited Liz and Jenna to come help with activities in the morning and they arrived Friday night. We got up early Saturday morning and headed to the location for the event. We got stuff set up and at 8:30 when we were supossed to start there weren't any participants. That was not too surprising, events rarely start on time in Paraguay, So we waited, continued with set-up and figured we'd start when the mayor arrived. By 9:00 the mayor was present, but there still weren't many participants. Not even the candidates for Youth Secretary were present. Eventually they arrived, but only to finalize their campaigns, not to actually participate in the needs assessments activities that we were doing.

While people debated over the big vote outside, we were deciding what to do inside. Eventually we started the activities with the few people who were there and talked about problems affecting youth in Coronel Oviedo. Then we ate lunch and headed over to the gym where the election would take place.

The election was a huge success. There were more than 4000 people registered to vote and about 1000 participated in the election. A terna, group of three, was elected and will be presented as candidates to the mayor for Youth Secretary. Unfortunately I don't know any of the candidates, so I have no idea how well they'd do with the new job, I guess I'll find out soon enough.

Hopefully next year they will have better success with both parts of the event.


Brochure for the Forum



Meeting with the Candidates


Ivan, exhausted from entering all the info in the computer

Setting up


Needs Assessment

Hard-working Parliament members


Voting

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Democracy?

It was nearly two years ago that I first heard about the democratic election of the Youth Secretary in Villarrica and the subsequent creation of the Youth Department and Casa de la Juventud in the town to my south. I was intrigued. Everyone in Paraguay talks about the youth, but few actually create projects that benefit the largest sector of the population. Coronel Oviedo had a Youth Secretary when I first arrived, but he was politically appointed and did not do many projects. He ended up quiting within a few months and was never replaced. The position sat vacant and although I heard rumors that the mayor wanted to appoint someone new, he never did, and therefore no new projects were planned.

During the two years I was in Oviedo I occasionally worked with the municipality and had a few contacts there. Together with these contacts I presented the idea to the mayor to reopen the Youth Secretary position as a democratically elected position in order to teach the local youth about civic participation, democracy and leadership. I planned a full day of activities and invited the youth. In May of 2010 we held the Primer Foro Juvenil Parlamentario, in which about 100 youth conducted needs analysis activities and elected three candidates from which the mayor chose one representative to hold the position of Youth Secretary.

Throughout the past year I have worked with the current Youth Secretary and the Youth Parliament to plan and execute various projects and promote civic participation. For the past two months we have been focusing on planning this year's forum. I have left the majority of the planning to the youth, while I serve as more of a guide. The project will only be sustainable if they know how to execute it again in following years.

This year the candidates for secretary had to sign-up early and those who want to vote have to register, like in a real election. There are currently 9 candidates for the position and over 4000 people registered to vote. The topic comes up often on local radio and tv shows and people all over town are talking about it. The participation has far exceeded our expectations.

Unfortunately the growth in participation has also resulted in corruption and dishonesty. I have heard rumors of people being paid to vote for a certain candidate and people sneaking in extra voter registrations past the deadline

One of my major goals with the project is to show the kids that democracy is possible, there can be clean and honest elections. Their generation can bring about change. The first year went really well. This year the politics have changed from small and clean to large and dirty. I hope that we can resolve these problems before the vote on Saturday. I hope that they can see that democracy can bring people to power who actually want to help bring about change.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Birthday #4 Paraguaype

This past Saturday I had my fourth, yes fourth, birthday in Paraguay. Because my birthday fell during training I was one of the few to celebrate an extra birthday here. The first one, my 24th birthday, I spent at my host family from training's house. I invited all the other trainees to hang out on the front patio area. We drank lots of beer, wine and coke, and cana and ate mac and cheese that my friend Heather helped me cook up. Then for my 25th I invited a few Paraguayan friend, my PC buddy Erin and a visitor she had to my house for tacos. Birthday number 26 was pretty depressing. It was Good Friday, which means most places are closed all day. I ate lunch with the novio's family, which was nice and then made homemade pizza for dinner. Victor and Angelic came over for dinner and cards, although it was a good time and we enjoyed ourselves, this year I wanted to do something more. So Victor and I went to Asuncion for a date night. We went to dinner at Las Palomas, a mexican restaurant near the hotel where we stayed and enjoyed a yummy spicy dish served in a molcajete and I had a refreshing margarita. It was wonderful and relaxing. Victor's family also prepared an asado for lunch and even got me a cake. I can definitely say I had a great birthday this year.

Our food looked something like this, with tortillas:


And the margarita: