painting your portrait

Exploring self-portraiture further, the young people used paint to illustrate or convey an aspect of themselves. The kids discussed a part of their body they like or a part of themselves that illustrates something about themselves e.g things they enjoy like dancing or painting or a feature of their personality .

writing a self-portrait

After taking self-portraits of themselves, the kids then wrote on and changed the photographs to reflect aspects of themselves. The young people discussed things that they like or hate or, for example, things that make them angry, sad or happy.

self portraits

Feelings in photos

Carrying on from the self-portraiture work, the young people experimented with conveying emotions in a photo. The kids were given a list of emotions, e.g. happy, sad, angry etc and were asked to try and take photos that would convey or represent a particular feeling.
In an activity the young people worked in pairs with each member of the pair directing and setting up their portrait shot. The kids directed their partner of when the final shot would be taken.

Funny duck

Bailer de Michael Jackson!

To continue the 'monster theme', Nick ran a special monster dance session!.....

Hello CMAP, Juconi, ICYE and all followers of this here blogspot,

I am Nick, Laura's boyfriend and I recently visited Guayaquil (or Wayakeel as I am now pronouncing it like a true local eh!) for an all too brief adventure in Guayas and then further afield. I have been asked to contribute a little to this wonderful blog about the couple of days that I had visiting the sectors with the excellent Juconi staff and their pretty good English volunteers (yes that's you Laura and Nina). So here goes...

After a relaxed Sunday of my arrival it was all stations go on the Monday as we headed into Mall du Sur to meet Nina and Giovanni who had been on Operation Amistad. After hearing all about the sectors and how vibrant and visceral they were I was a little disappointed to find that Mall du Sur is in fact a... well, it's a inner city mall. Not to worry though, we were soon on a bus headed towards Fertisa where we played a couple of parachute games before heading inside to take part in some emotion illustration art exercises. Having a kind of plasticiney visage I was the initial emotion model face. It didn't take long before I was joined - and then ousted - by a bunch of cheeky little tykes who felt, and rightly so, that they could pull far better faces than I. All in all great fun but also quite sobering to see a colourfully drawn sad face with a gun next to it as one thing that makes it sad.

On Tuesday we headed into Balerio for the first of my specially commissioned one off tailor made just for Guayaquil and non other bespoke Michael Jackson Thriller dance workshop. Not speaking Spanish I had prepared a few choice phrases such as "Howl like a wolf" and "walk like a zombie" and "please stand in a line and don't all grab at once". However in the end it was down to mad gesticulation, wild Spanglish and the patient help of Pablo to vaguely keep the 38 children engaged and not trying to eat each others limbs with the plastic vampire teeth I brought out.

Wednesday was into Nueva Prosperina for round two of the Wacko Jacko Workshop. I was mightily impressed (as I was the day before) with the fact that four year olds were so knowledgeable about MJ let alone able to bust out the moonwalk, the smooth criminal toe stand and out-thriller-zombie-walk me. I think Giovanni and David oscillated somewhere between bemusement and mild alarm at some aspects of the workshop - mainly when I told them to stand in the middle and be sacred heroines that were going to be mauled by the pack of walking undead that we had just created. We rounded it off with a game of football during which I think David and I realised we were being perhaps a little over competitive against each other and backed off without loosing face (or the game in my case, heheh). We rounded the day off with a couple of cold cervecas and chifles (yum) and more Spanglish conversations in a lively bar in town.

I had a lovely time. I was made to feel so welcome by the children and staff that from the moment I was there it was the easiest thing in the world to grin and get stuck in. I know there is hardship and poverty in the lives of the children, of which I only saw a relatively small amount, but my lasting memories will be the radiant smiles, the respectful exuberance and the cheeky questions asked with wide eyed innocence.

Muchas gracias y hasta luego Guayaquil. Ciao.