PUMPIN' TRUCKIN' LOVIN' LIVIN'

Hey everyone!
Thanks for visiting!  It really means a lot to us that you follow our project and support us wholeheartedly!


We had an unexpected cancellation the week before last due to a teachers strike, on a national level.
Then our murale got postponed until today.  Today I will give you the briefing of the week that has just passed and our plans for the week to come.


I'm proud to present our team: (from left to right) Luis, Levi, Kat, Keylita and Angel

This week Luis, our theater teacher from La Restinga, the local NGO that both G! and Bola Roja are affiliated with, came aboard.  Luis has been planning and participating in all of our Saturday meetings, and finally has his chance to shine.  With a new energy and creativity we finally began our first week of theater.  Tuesday, July 17th we spent the class going through various theatrical exercises and partner dynamics, mainly to get a glimpse in who was the most outgoing and has theatrical potential, and from our previous puppet making classes we now know who enjoys working with their hands.

                           Puppets with Angel                           Theater with Luis

From the information that we've gathered we were able to split our class into two groups.  10 and 10.  10 kids with Angel to learn advanced puppetry and 10 with Luis to learn theater.  Both groups will perform an environmentally themed creative piece, such as contamination and biodiversity.  Good clown vs. Bad clown :0)  To hallucinate a bit: Clown super heroes triumphing over the evil contaminating clowns.  In puppetry, we'll create a scene and actualize it with the puppets Angel's group will create.

Exciting stuff!!

Thursday, July 19th was our first day that we split the two groups.  They took to it extremely well.  Angel began working with his group on the construction of their puppets, while Luis began with some interactive theater exercises, such as 'The Human Machine'...

This Saturday, July 21st, we began our community murale painting.  Involved were a few key teachers helping with the project and the kids from both 5th and 6th grade... Ages range from 9-13.

We have completed Phase 1, should have about 2 more sessions left to accomplish our design...suspense!!

Que Exito!!!

What a process, what an outcome...  The kids are great, the teachers are great and our team is doing an outstanding job!  Its a lot of work, but someones gotta do it!!  We're Clown SuperHeroes!!! :0)

This Tuesday, July 24th, we will install our compost bin, made by us and donated from the school, that the kids and teachers will maintain!!

Wednesday, we have a make-up class where we will focus on Biodiversity and our two workshops.

Thursday, July 26th, we will focus completely on theater and puppet making.

Will keep you all posted on our next painting session, aka, Phase 2.

(coming soon, building a community herb garden..)

Payasos Ambientalistas

Welcome to our new project 'Los Payasos Ambientalistas'.

We're proud to say were more than a month into our workshops and everything is going extremely well.  

In this project, with our team of local activists and artists, we are leading a 2-3 month long workshop.  This workshop focuses on environmental education as well as art and theater. The environmental education is broken into two segments including hands on projects, such as building compost and hanging gardins. The two educational segments are Solid Residuals, which includes waste separation, and our second theme is Biodiverstiy in the greater part of Iquitos.

Our art workshops focus on using organic and local materials. Things you can find in your neighborhood, or that virtually have no cost. Some materials consist of: dirt, seeds, bottles, glue (using flour and water), paper, etc... Simple and yet effective. We also lead workshops in puppetry, using wire, seeds and donated fabric. With the hand puppets our students will lead us on a story of environmental justice and will communicate their knowledge of Iquitos's local resources. Our theater piece will focus on clown heroes, wearing custom red and yellow noses, who have to over come the evil black nosed clowns that seek to terrorize mother nature.

The first round of puppets, our trial. This week begins cone puppets!

This year we are working in a school located in Belen, sector 10, called Sara Sabebein. We began our pilot project Tues. June, 19th. We run clases Tues. and Thurs. each week. Our students range from ages 9-12. Some students are repeats while others are brighter for their age. The average ages are 10 and 11. Both the students and teachers have taken to our group and teachings with opened hearts, minds and opened arms. 

This week:

Tues, July 10: we have a presentation on biodiversity given by the head of environmental education at IIAP (Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonia Peruana) IIAP is large national institute with credibility from the Ministry of Environmental Education in Peru.

We will then go on to play the fruit game. This will consist of blindfolding our students so they can feel and taste different fruits to educationally guess what they are. They then will draw the fruit and answer a series of questions about its physical attributes to be posted throughout the school.

Thurs, July 12th we will spend the day working on theater.

Community Project

This week we will paint a mural consisting of 'la naturaleza' with our students and will mark the area where we will develop a compost bin, which will be donated by the school. In front of the compost bin the students will install their hanging gardens, which will be growing plants: herbs, vegetables and flowers that we'll cycle into the compost project. This community project will take place this coming Saturday, July 14th at 8 o'clock am, and will include participation from the students family, the students and the teachers.