Day 8-Environmental Justice

Dearest gentle reader,

Hello from today’s LDDs, Satya and Maddy! Today (day 8) our focus was Environmental Justice. Today we had a little bit of a rough start to our morning as LDDs, as a group we were all pretty exhausted and low-energy. We were having a difficult time adjusting as leaders, but throughout the day, we settled into our roles. We learned how to lead a large group of people as well as how to stay organized and on top of things. We got better at timing and having our voices be heard so that we could be more effective leaders. We had a slow morning as we were all tired from swimming in the waterfall yesterday! We had a delicious breakfast of pancakes, scrambled eggs, and fruit! This was also served with fresh juice and iced tea. After breakfast, we had a mental warm-up that prepared us for the guest speaker who would visit us later in the day. 

After the mental warm-up, we held a CAP seminar where we went over what our CAP project would be tomorrow as well as what to expect. We talked about the steps in designing and building a project and why they were all important. We talked about the group we were working with and why it is so important to collaborate with the local communities in these types of projects and how we can most effectively make a difference. It was still pretty early and all of us were still pretty sleepy so Memo led us in a game called “I share common ground with…”. This game helped us find similarities with one another as well as giving us energy! 

For lunch, we ate Arroz Con Pollo, salad, and refried beans, which was super super tasty! After lunch, we had about two hours of free time until Andres, or Fofo (our guest speaker),  came to give us a presentation on Environmental Justice. He was an inspiring person to meet and he was really passionate and knew a lot about the subject he was talking about. After his presentation, we split off into groups where we held a debate about the effects of tourism on the environment as well as the communities around it. We took sides as the developers of a hotel, the local community, and the government. In the end, the local community won the debate, but we were maybe a little biased because we had just spent the day learning about the harmful effects of tourism. This activity was very fun and got us all thinking from different perspectives. 

After this, we had, again, much-needed free time. This time was spent going to the local market (or Chino) in Aquiares as well as going to the park and playing soccer and volleyball with some local kids. We couldn’t always communicate with each other but we still connected over playing sports together. After about an hour we all headed back to the base house for dinner. Dinner was spaghetti with red sauce, garlic bread, and salad! After dinner, we had our usual nightly meeting where we passed the torch to Victoria and Daniella, our LDDs for tomorrow (day 9, as well as our first CAP day), and we are excited to see what great leaders they will be! 

More photos from today here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/3cp3y2t4rvFpdR6C6

-Satya Dalia and Madelyn Randolph