Getting to Know Sara and Visiting "Turning Hearts"

Today was a very special day for our group.  Today we had the privilege to sit down and hear a bit more about Sara's story and experience the work she does everyday in Tijuana.  Sara is a promotora for Via International, the group that allowed us to come to San Diego this week.  Being a promotora, Sara is very highly respected in her community because becoming a promotora is no easy task, and she shared a little of that with us today.  As a promotora, Sara has gone through hours of nutrition and cooking classes along with community leadership training to become a nutrition authority and guru in her own community.  Sara and other promotoras, after completely their intensive program, go out into their community and share their knowledge of healthy, and more affordable, cuisine with other women, and the occasional man. 

To begin our time with her, Sara opened with an activity that she uses as a promotora to begin new sessions.  It was called teleraña or cobweb in Spanish and it begins with Sara holding one end of a ball of yarn and introducing herself by sharing something important to her in her life before passing the ball to someone else in the group who would do the same.  Each person, as their turn comes, holds onto a piece of yarn before passing the ball to the next person across the circle.  In the end, we learn a little more about one another and realize that we are all connected and without one of the members, the whole web fails.  Following this interactive and fun introduction, we learned a little more about how Sara teaches her classes before heading to the kitchen to prepare some ceviche with soya or soy ceviche, a traditionally seafood dish that is cooked in the acidic juices of lime, tomato, and onion along with cilantro, and cucumber.  It was not only fun and informational, but delicious!  And now, we all have a little bit of Sara that we can bring home with us!

Later that afternoon, we traveled to the "Turning the Hearts" Center, which is a local center dedicated to youth and adult empowerment in the local community.  The programs offered by "Turning the Hearts" address issues of teen pregnancy prevention, career-minded and work-readiness programs, mentorship connections, G.E.D. and educational assistance, anger management and substance abuse sessions, and their most famous "G.A.M.E" program which stands for "Gang Awareness through Mentoring and Education.  All of the members of the Turning Hearts staff are dedicated to these programs but do not offer a service or program unless their heart is in it, in order to offer the best results for those in need.  One of the highlights of the visit was our participation in a specially designed game that the staff had created for their youth.  In the game, there is a 54-square mat on the ground and the goal is to go from the start side to the finish side by stepping in the correct squares.  If the correct sequence is not employed, then the player must start over.  Players can only step one square at a time but may go in any direction and will be signaled if they have not chosen the right square.  There is no talking to or touching of the participant by the rest of the group, but they can offer advice in any other way they wish.  The game, admittedly, was very difficult, but the point was to show the difficulty in making important or even just daily life decisions.  There may be an innumerable amount of advice or pressure from the outside but it ultimately up to the player to make a decision and live with the consequences.  Additionally, there comes a point when no one in the group had come to the next step or next square in the sequence and so had no sure ideas on which way to direct the player, which simulates life in many ways.  Another goal of this was to emphasize the importance of back-tracking and trying again, never giving up, which was done many a time for our groups that played. 

Another highlight was hearing the personal story of Manny Castro, the adviser of the G.A.M.E. program, who himself had to leave a life of gang violence and drug addiction to find himself in the place he was today.  He, and the rest of the staff members and volunteers, have strong convictions and deep passions for the people that they serve, and it was refreshing and inspiring to experience the vision of their program.