Starting off this day was a blast!  We woke our peers up with a “bang, bang, bang”; an onslaught of sticky notes on their doors (and some light tapping, which apparently sounded too much like rain.)  After our morning routine as a group, we embarked on an arduous trek to Nuario, Los Santos, a small pueblo in Panama housing an organization called Grupo Ambiental Nuario.  The Grupo was formed to preserve the earth’s ecosystems, protect biodiversity, and promote healthy communities within the area.

As we went through Nuario, we reminded our Glimpsers about the question of the day, which regarded the positives and negatives of non-profits in developing countries. Our Glimpsers proceeded to bombard the community leaders with questions in the hopes of creating a stellar Community Action Project (CAP) that would not only help immediately but be an investment in their future.  We gleaned essential information for our CAP project, to be used to benefit the community.  At that point, we discussed and evaluated the information we got from it, choosing three potential pathways for the project.  The first one was to fix or build another vivero (nursery) for fruit tree seedlings. The second one was a playground and garden for the local school. The third was to create a recycling and trash system to contend with the colossal amounts of waste.

After that, we began preparing, in groups or individually, to tutor English to our students at Ifarhu. We made sure to make the most out of all of the resources we had; implementing books, flashcards, fun games, and the like. While we found yesterday’s class a challenge, we armed ourselves psychologically for our lessons today.  Our Glimpsers newfound confidence allowed us to focus even more and achieve the onerous task of teaching English to non-native speakers. We left feeling proud and satisfied with our efforts.

Finally, we bonded over the nightly meeting, sharing “Big Love” with each other, feeling ready to approach the next day.  We learned more about ourselves and our community.  Our leaders met us for a Fourth of July surprise complete with a pinata, decorations, and a cake!  We ate a lot of sweets and slept like plants in a vivero that night, listos para mañana! (ready for tomorrow!)