Youth Development Project
Family to Family Soccer Project
The soccer program in the Cahabon District is helping to keep the youth going to school and participating in wholesome recreational activity – keeping them away from the alcohol and drug culture.
The Mayor of the Municipality of Cahabon has requested some help with the soccer program.
There are 205 villages in the Cahabon District. In each village, the young people like to play soccer. However, most of the villages do not have a flat field where they can play soccer. The Mayor said that when he visits a village the thing they usually want most is to have the road-building equipment come in and level an area that can be used for a soccer field – to give their youth something to do.
The Cahabon soccer program requires the youth to attend school and not drink alcohol or use drugs.
This is a real incentive to the youth to improve their lives – so they can play soccer.
Sustainable Families Project
We are in the process of completing a booklet titled Building Sustainable Families. This is a series of active lessons with families, to help them build connected families. It will be translated into both Spanish and Q'eqchi' languages.
As part of the program, we are going to a villages to take pictures of the families in the village, and give them a framed copy of their picture, to hang on their wall.
Most of these families have never had a picture of their family. This is the beginning of a new project to promote "sustainable families."
First, we need to promote the importance of the family unit, and having a picture of their family will focus on the importance of their own family.
Graduating from Daily Dose English Class
The Daily Dose English Program has been used by Welcome Hand volunteers to teach refugees and immigrants how to navigate in a world dominated by a language foreign to their own.
The Daily Dose website says, “Daily Dose is a warm and sensitive way of helping people feel comfortable learning English. It is based on love, personal attention and human interaction. Unlike traditional programs,
Daily Dose has no grammar books, homework assignments or boring lectures. Participants learn in small interactive groups called huddles where they receive a healthy dose of love, support and encouragement.Most immigrants or refugees have transportation problems, so the volunteers with Welcome Hand teach the families in their homes. Participants learn how to handle real-life situations like introducing themselves, shopping, using public transportation, or opening a checking account.
The picture above is a special event to give out certificates of achievement, and celebrate their progress in learning the English language for everyday needs. It is a very successful program, primarily because of the personal interaction with the volunteer/teacher.