Change

As you know, my time in Costa Rica came to a close in 2011. I moved to Boston and enjoyed two years of meeting new friends, being close to home, and working at the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center's Let's Get Movin' program. Now, I am transitioning to a role as the Local Program Director with Soccer Without Borders in Granada, Nicaragua. To read more about my experiences in Nicaragua, you can follow my new blog at Jamasatras.blogspot.com. 

I would like to briefly draw some connection between what I have been doing to what I am going to do now. 

While working as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Costa Rica, I helped develop a project called the Copa Indigena (or Indigenous Championship). The project involved soccer as a way to organize Indigenous youth to form a national network of leaders who would one day be able to advocate for their communities' rights. The league formed with 8 communities providing both men's and women's teams, and before we knew it, we were traveling around the whole country bringing kids from one town to another to spend weekends playing and learning about each other's cultures. It was a beautiful project, and it continues on today thanks to SeproJoven. 

Through the Copa and other projects like the Liga Fem (a league for immigrant girls in the capital city) Seprojoven was invited to join an international network of nonprofits that use soccer as a tool for development. That network is called StreetFootballWorld. The idea that other grassroots organizations were developing successful programs like ours was an encouragement and led me to pursue other opportunities to mix soccer with youth development. 

With that in mind, I moved to Boston in 2011 and took a job with Let's Get Movin'. The program there worked with Latino kids and families to promote healthy lifestyles by providing sports programs, nutrition education and increased access to healthy foods in the community (a community garden, farmers market, campaigns in corner stores, etc). It is an excellent program and through it I was able to practice my Spanish, play soccer, and learn more about coordinating a non-profit organization. 

Part of the success that Let's Get Movin' saw and continues to see is due to the number of partnerships it has with orgs like YMCA, WIC, and other nonprofits in East Boston including another member of the StreetFootballWorld network, Soccer Without Borders. The two programs, LGM and SWB, collaborated for about a year on the redesign of a free soccer program available to all kids in the community. LGM has the connection to recruit tons of kids who want to play, and SWB is able to recruit qualified soccer coaches who can provide quality practices for their teams. It has been a pleasure to see the growth in the relationship between the two organizations and how they are both able to greater impact the kids in East Boston. 

In considering my interest in soccer-related nonprofits, I didn't have a hard time finding an excellent opportunity to adjust my own trajectory. While Soccer Without Borders was establishing the program in East Boston, the program in Granada continued to grow, and the position of Local Program Director opened up. I felt like it was the right time to  gain a new perspective, and in the process, continue building on what I already know. 

After discussing the position and deciding I would pursue it, the director of SWB was kind enough to allow me to finish my time with LGM, and she even set aside time to accompany me down to Granada for the first two weeks of my time here. 

As I write, we are wrapping up week one, which I have spent meeting staff and the kids, looking for a place to live, and preparing for this weekend's big event, the Global Peace Games. As an added bonus, the director of SeproJoven is coming from Costa Rica to visit the event this weekend, and we hope to explore how else the two organizations can partner together. I will be thrilled to see this happen, and I look forward to telling you more about it. 

Again, you can follow my new blog at jamasatras.blogspot.com. There you will see that the words "Jamas Atras" and "Siempre Adelante" are simply spanish translations of the themes of "Jamais Arriere" and "Forward". 

I hope you like it. It is a pleasure to share these experiences with you.