Spotlight on Preparing for your Delegation
As delegation season approaches, we'd like to support you in any way possible, please go to our website
www.share-elsalvador.org/delegations/delprep for more information.
In preparation for their delegation experience,
Good Shepherd Parish in Shawnee, KS provides each delegate with a delegation notebook. The primary purpose of the notebook is to assist delegates in discernment, preparation and process of their journey to El Salvador. The notebook is complied in an effort to take the mystery out of the details and answer commonly asked questions and provide commonly needed information. This notebook is a collection of the best practices and advice of Good Shepherd's delegates that have made the journey to El Salvador for the past 20 years. It also has the updated SHARE delegation packet and SHARE resource guide.
In preparing for the journey, delegates come together for 3-4 orientation meetings in which many of the topics in the notebook are discussed. This preparation time for the delegates is very important, not only to prepare personally but to create a bond among the delegates. The Good Shepherd Parish community is invested in the faith journey of the delegates in several ways. Parishioners are invited to write messages and prayers that are taken with the delegation and read by the delegates during stay in El Salvador.
Delegates are blessed at Sunday Mass by the parish community the weekend before they leave. There is a packing night and dinner in which families of the delegates and parishioners are invited to attend. When the delegation returns, there is a debriefing for the parish in which the delegates share their experience and talk about what impacted them most while in El Salvador. Over the years, the enthusiasm and passion of the stories told by the delegates when they return is the impetus that plants the seed for the next parish delegation.
Conversation topics for meetings:
Have members of the delegation tell why they've decided to travel
Ask former travelers to mention a face or two that they cannot forget
Get acquainted with issues facing the Salvadoran people
Have each delegation member draw what they think El Salvador will be like on the first orientation meeting, then upon your return, have delegates do a second drawing. Compare the two drawings and discuss the differences.
Ideas for organizing youth delegations, and activities that provide education, nurture group building, and encourage reflection
At
Central Baptist Church in Wayne, PA, we have required our youth and the adults accompanying them to make a full year commitment prior to departure so that we can nurture group building, provide education, and encourage reflection. We ask a lot of the participants – attending monthly (more or less) meetings, taking part in enrichment activities, working on fund-raising projects.
In the monthly meetings, we deal with administrative details (lining up passports, filling out paperwork, discussing travel details), planning future events, and some basic learning about El Salvador and our relationships with our sister congregations.
We also have had an off-site weekend retreat (lovingly named “Boot Camp”) for each delegation. Getting out of our suburban context and comfort zone is part of the experience. Both times we have intentionally selected locations with very simple accommodations – first time in a rural setting where we had to use outhouses and slept dorm style on army surplus cots; second time in an inner-city neighborhood church setting where we slept in sleeping bags on the floor. Everyone selects a planning committee to work with to get organized for boot camp – food, music, devotions, etc.
Prior to the boot camp, we also divide into small groups around themes of Salvadoran history, politics and economics, plus the faith and religious context in El Salvador. Everyone is required to bring resources on the selected topics to boot camp. During the weekend we spend time in our learning groups that organize creative presentations to share with the whole group. Fun and games are built into the weekend. We spend time practicing songs in Spanish and English to share with our friends in El Salvador and we work together to create banners to present to each of our sister communities. The boot camp is a great group building experience with everyone sharing sleeping quarters and working together to cook meals of rice and beans, as well as pupusas!
We use various video resources to share with the youth during our monthly meetings and at boot camp – the Romero movie, Portraits in a Revolution video, a SOA Watch video (Crossing the Line) produced by high school youth who attended the Ft. Benning protests, and Voces Innocentes.
This year, at one of the meetings early on in our preparations, we had the youth delegation produce a DVD to document storytelling by three CBC adults who took part in various delegations to El Salvador during the war. This was an opportunity to learn about that time in El Salvador’s history and to hear about the impact that those delegations had on these individuals. experiences.. The DVD has been added to our church archives to preserve some of that early history of our Salvadoran relationships. (I have a plan to ask the youth make a post-delegation DVD of themselves telling about this trip, too, using the same interview questions that they used for the adults…)
To help our group reflect on justice and poverty issues here in our own backyard as well as in El Salvador, we have included a “Reality Tour” component. that consists of guided walking tours in Kensington and Norristown in our metropolitan Philadelphia region. We have coordinated these experiences with friends of our congregation who live and work in the those communities and who also have experience living in El Salvador. In 2004, the Kensington tour was led by our friends from the Simple Way Community who have deep relationships with our sister Baptist communities in Santa Ana and Atiquizaya. In 2007, we did a tour of the Hispanic immigrant neighborhood in Norristown with Rev. Doug Avilesbernal, pastor of a Baptist church there, who grew up in San Salvador during the war.
We also incorporate a SHARE orientation component into our pre-departure plans. In 2004 we were able to organize a trip to Washington DC to visit the SHARE offices, have our orientation with SHARE staff, and eat in a Salvadoran restaurant. This year we had Elly Jordan, SHARE US Grassroots Coordinator come to visit us and do our SHARE orientation at CBC.
To broaden the experience in the larger congregation, we also solicit adult sponsors from the congregation to partner with each of the youth delegates. The sponsorship model is intended to be a way for the youth to deepen intergenerational connections and to share their experience in El Salvador in a personal way, plus in some cases they receive financial support from their sponsor. The delegates and their sponsors work out their own plans for the relationship – maybe they will have a couple of meals together to talk about plans for the trip and what is being learned, maybe the youth will keep a journal during the trip to share with the sponsor afterwards, maybe the sponsor has resources to share to add to the youth’s learning experience? The sponsors have been invited to share in some of the delegation preparation activities.
We highlight the delegation during our worship services in a number of ways. We have a special offering for the delegation, and youth delegation writes a newsletter article to promote that offering and they also have time to speak in worship about the significance of the delegation and to encourage generous giving! During the year, we remember significant anniversaries in worship -- the four US churchwomen, Oscar Romero, and others. Youth delegation members help lead some of those worship experiences – children’s conversations, responsive readings, etc. We have a commissioning service for the delegation in worship prior to departure and when the delegations return, the delegates plan and lead a worship service to share their reflections and experiences with the congregation.
We also plan a post-delegation party to share photos and stories together. Family members are invited, and this year we will also invite the sponsors to join us.
MISCELLANEOUS
In late December, our El Salvador Mission Group organized an informal “fiesta” and reunion party for the now college age young people who participated in the 2004 delegation. We invited the current youth delegation to be part of that social event, and we also we very fortunate to have Tara come as a special guest. There was no agenda other than to have a social event, but it was a way for the current youth delegation to get a sense of CBC’s connection to SHARE and to feel connected to the other CBC youth who had a great experience in El Salvador.
The youth decided to set up a youth delegation blog to post information about the delegation, photos of some of the group activities, etc. We shared that with youth / young people at Shekina in Santa Ana and hoped that it would be a way to foster some relationships across the geographic distance. (Enthusiasm for keeping that up to date has waned! It has / had great potential, though….)
Fundraising activities“rent-a-youth” – We do various jobs for congregation members like yardwork, painting, childcare. Half of the “rent” gets credited to the individuals who do the work and half goes into a common pot to support the entire delegation expenses
congregational meals – preparing and serving lunch for various after-church meetings
talent show – a church-wide event with a donations basket for the delegation
car wash
special congregational offering
adult financial sponsors
Ideas for Delegation Meetings
1. Watch a video such as :
Romero. Starring Raul Julia. Vidmark Entertainment video. 105 minutes
Innocent Voices Luis Mandosky, Oscar Orlando Torres (2004) A story about young boys coming of age in the midst of the civil war in El Salvador.
School of Assassins , narrated by Susan Sarandon, 1995 Academy Award Nominee. Available from Maryknoll World Productions.
Roses in December. The story of Jean Donovan by Ana Carrigan and Bernard Stone. Available from Maryknoll World Productions. Tel. 1-800-227-8523.
Invite a Salvadoran American to one of your meetings.
Find a Salvadoran Recipe and make it as a group.
Have each group member introduce one of the Martyrs from the Civil War in El Salvador, telling about their life and death.
After reading the economic section of the resource guide, have group members write down the home countries of each item purchased the next time they go grocery shopping, the next meeting, discuss what the various locations means with regard to free trade, import-export companies, farm subsidies in the United States, CAFTA, and PPP.
After reading the economic section of the resource guide, do a “closet inventory” noting everything that you wear regularly and what country it was made in. Discuss what the various locations means with regard to free trade, import-export companies, CAFTA, and PPP.
Ask each group member to record what he or she did in a day. Then ask them to imagine the energy that they would have had to put into similar activities if they were without: A road between their home and the nearest city/town, running water, or electricity.
Find how your members of Congress voted on CAFTA. Discuss what you can do while in El Salvador and after your trip to educate others on trade issues.
Ask others who have been to El Salvador prior to help you construct a history of your sister community or region.
Be creative and have fun, this is the adventure of a lifetime!!Labels: Preparing for your Delegation
