A Season's Change

There are only two seasons in Ecuador: winter and summer. The former is characterized by torrential downpours of rain every afternoon. The latter is the exact opposite, no rain whatsoever. Fall and spring are completely ostracized here on the equator leaving little room for transition from one climate to the next. Because of this, when one season will end and the next begins is a guessing game. But now, more than ever, we have much reason to assume that summer is comin round the bend. As the kids pile through the 2-ton metal door frame into are makeshift school, we notice that not a single one is wearing his or her galoshes that they have worn since day one. For three days in row now, we have been without a single drop of rain and temperatures have been a balmy 80 degrees. And early, every morning for the past week, I have seen the white, snow capped peak of Cotopaxi 100 miles south looming over Pasachoa and the Los Chillos Valley in which we live.

But the seasons of change not only apply to the climate of the Andes Cordillera; we too are coming out of winter and opening the door to a warmer and brighter season. We just finished our first Spring Break Volunteer session that included 45 Med-school and undergrad students who worked in and around our community, San Francisco, over the past month. Each of the 4 groups played a major role in propelling us forward into a more mature site. The groups aided in donating school supplies and new reading material for improving literacy. They worked with us to fund and repair the playground next to our school with new equipment, fresh paint, and a better soccer field. They have helped improve the health of the community by stocking the health centers with $5000 worth of donated medical supplies. They have raised half the funds to pay a social worker for 1-year who will provide psychological care for the abused children in our programs. But most importantly, they helped us get the ball rolling on transitioning from providing after-school programs with the kids to providing vital services to the whole community via our community assessment program.

Our community assessment program is unlike the traditional community needs-based assessment, which takes a look at a community to see what they lack and where they are weak, and then caters to that information. But the route we are taking assesses what the community has and where they are strong, and then helps to use those strengths to build up the community. Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, calls this the Hedgehog approach. He applies it to businesses, but the principle is sound across the board for any organization. It is when an organization takes what they have, what they know, and what they are good at and builds the organization upon those strengths. The same can be applied for community development and it is what we hope to do here in our community.

We are joined by another organization and together we plan to assess the strengths of 5 communities in the same area, one of those communities being San Francisco, by way of surveying 1000 to 1200 families. It is a lot like a census in many ways but from the data we will extrapolate what services are provided and how well it is doing. And for us, we will be looking at the data to guide us to where our assistance can best be used in the 3 long, muddy streets that make up San Francisco.

So, as the day slowly ages and the sun stretches high above the Valley with the clouds still at bay, we as an organization have a lot to look forward to in the coming months. And before we know it, summer volunteers will be arriving just as we begin to pine for more rain, to again propel us forward and remind us just how pleasant the weather really is.

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