first week of the project
The first week of the project was spent in Bogota with all 25 participants (minus two from India and one from Russia who were having visa problems), and was basically a huge information dump about the issue of forced internal displacement in Colombia so as to bring everyone up to speed with the current reality in which we'll be working. It was all in Spanish, which was pretty intense, but after while it became more normal, and I was able to get an idea of the issue of forced displacement and what's being done to address it.
The basic idea of the project (called 'Alcance Social') is to create awareness of the issue of forced displacement in Colombia (forced displacement, as defined by the Colombian govenment, is displacement that has come about as a result of the internal armed conflict in Colombia - basically, people who have fled their homes in the countryside due to fear of death at the hands of armed groups and have come to the cities to seek refuge). The idea is that each Colombian intern will be paired up with an international intern (I'll be working with a guy called Andres), and the various pairings will work with the government programs that work with displaced people in 10 different cites around Colombia.
We got a lot of info and it was a pretty intense week, but it was also great to meet and get to know all the other participants, who are a great bunch of people. The days were hard work absorbing all the information, but the nighttime activities were all based around getting to know the city of Bogota, as well as each other. We did some tourist-like stuff, as well as hitting a good selection of bars and clubs so we could get to know each other in a less serious environment, which was good. The social highlight was Friday night's trip on the 'chiva', which is a party bus that you can hire out that drives around to various nightspots in Bogota until the driver finally gets sick of all the drinking and dancing and music and drops you off at the main nightclub strip. 40 plus people drinking and dancing in the back of an old wooden bus is pretty crazy, and there's always going to be casualties: one poor girl fell while she was dancing and hurt her leg... she had a nasty bruise (and a nastier hangover!) the next day...
Saturday was the last day of the conference, and that afternoon/night we all split up in our pairings to go to the cities where we'd be working. With Andres, I got the bus from Bogota at 10pm, and slept all the way to Bucaramanga, where we arrived at about six in the morning. The AIESEC members picked us up at the bus terminal, cooked us breakfast, then left us to rest, cause the next day would be the first day of work...
The basic idea of the project (called 'Alcance Social') is to create awareness of the issue of forced displacement in Colombia (forced displacement, as defined by the Colombian govenment, is displacement that has come about as a result of the internal armed conflict in Colombia - basically, people who have fled their homes in the countryside due to fear of death at the hands of armed groups and have come to the cities to seek refuge). The idea is that each Colombian intern will be paired up with an international intern (I'll be working with a guy called Andres), and the various pairings will work with the government programs that work with displaced people in 10 different cites around Colombia.
We got a lot of info and it was a pretty intense week, but it was also great to meet and get to know all the other participants, who are a great bunch of people. The days were hard work absorbing all the information, but the nighttime activities were all based around getting to know the city of Bogota, as well as each other. We did some tourist-like stuff, as well as hitting a good selection of bars and clubs so we could get to know each other in a less serious environment, which was good. The social highlight was Friday night's trip on the 'chiva', which is a party bus that you can hire out that drives around to various nightspots in Bogota until the driver finally gets sick of all the drinking and dancing and music and drops you off at the main nightclub strip. 40 plus people drinking and dancing in the back of an old wooden bus is pretty crazy, and there's always going to be casualties: one poor girl fell while she was dancing and hurt her leg... she had a nasty bruise (and a nastier hangover!) the next day...
Saturday was the last day of the conference, and that afternoon/night we all split up in our pairings to go to the cities where we'd be working. With Andres, I got the bus from Bogota at 10pm, and slept all the way to Bucaramanga, where we arrived at about six in the morning. The AIESEC members picked us up at the bus terminal, cooked us breakfast, then left us to rest, cause the next day would be the first day of work...
posted by Steve Phillips at 3:21 pm
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