This summer, I am spending a winter in Argentina with 5 students and a university intern. In the last week we have been working on a school garden project at Pilares School, and we painted a beautiful mural at the school.  I have also been adopted by a loving and friendly family who refer to me as brother, son, grandson, and nephew by my respective family members. Though I had envisioned tall Andean Mountains when I thought of Argentina, we are living in a land as flat as a board, surrounded by two large rivers, the Parana and the Salado. On the outskirts of town are the ¨country clubs, ¨ where gated communities are filled with large, gorgeous trees, and green fields. In between here and the center are the ¨villas, ¨ the ghettos.  These projects are vast and are distinctively marked by layers and layers of trash where the government paid workers refuse to go to pick up garbage.

Let me explain my typical weekday to you thus far.  I wake up at 730am, and wait for the students to arrive at my house at 8am.  I have cereal for breakfast.  We take a bus to Pilares school where we teach English lessons, paint the mural (pictures), and work to create a healthy vegetable garden.  We eat lunch at Pilares (its a K-12 school with 350 students) with the Kindergartners. In the afternoon I teach workshops on composting, amending soil, and building a greenhouse with the students. We have been well received.  At 3:30pm we return to ISDI, the English Institute where Virginia and Edit (our GSE Argentina Directoras) work.  We often teach workshops to local students.  In the evening we have various activities: tango lessons (picture), trips into the city, and just hanging out with our families.  I eat around 10 pm and usually stay up talking with the family at the table until around midnight.

The family dynamic here is unbelievable and has nearly brought me to tears.  As I mentioned, my family has adopted me, told me I have a place to live anytime I am in Argentina, and called me their son, brother, grandson, and nephew. We eat together and will stay at the table talking untill midnight.

I have been working here with a group of 14 students and volunteers from the US for about a week and a half. Thus far, we’ve begun work on a GSE financed microlending poultry project at Mzumbe Secondary, and we’ve broken ground on our garden project Kilalakala Secondary. We have been working alongside Tanzanian GSE students and we are learning about productive ways we can organize and collaborate with our friends here.

The most exciting news is that The Morogoro Youth Training Center is up and running! The MYTC is a facility that we have been designing with our Tanzanian partners throughout the past year. We have rented a beautiful space on the second floor of a building in downtown Morogoro where there are sweeping views of the Uluguru Mountians. Our Califronia members have brought over 25 computers, and a projector for the computer training courses we will offer here. The center will benefit local GSE students, and the Morogoro community as a source of computer training, and Internet access. The revenues generated from the project will benefit GSE Tanzania’s youth leadership courses, and pay local staff in Morogoro to facilitate after school workshops in partnership with 4 local secondary schools. The workshops will focus on health, rural/ agricultural development, computer training, youth leadership, and globalization (including communication with our students in California, Argentina, and Peru). Revenues will also be used as microloans to support the implementation of profit generating projects at participating high schools.

Challenges include: creating the computer network, installing air-conditioning, building the desks, negotiating the lease, training our staff, interviewing candidates for the receptionist position, configuring the network, as well as jumping through the countless bureaucratic hoops. The energy and shared beliefs of our supporters in the United States motivated us to succeed. The MYTC is a beautiful room, and over the past 4 days since we opened, customers are beginning to come in increasing numbers. We have communicated with many university students at Mzumbe University, and Sokoine University of Agriculture who are excited about volunteering for our organization here (which was registered as an official Tanzanian NGO in early May).

We have 2 and a half more weeks here in Morogoro with our ambassadorial group, and we look forward to spending more time working with the GSE Tanzania students and volunteers. Everyone has been incredibly welcoming and excited to work with us, and we’re all learning a lot. Thanks again to all our supporters, and rest assured that all of our hard work and dedication is paying off, and that we are establishing positive international relationships and making real grassroots development in our world.

Since Bagamoyo we have spent a lot of time working with the students from Kilakala girls’ boarding school, Mzumbe boys’ boarding school, and Morogoro Secondary school. At Kilakala we are building a garden that will serve to demonstrate drip irrigation (any irrigation at all here is extremely rare) and raise money through sale of produce in the future. Mzumbe’s GSE club project is a large chicken “banda” where the boys will raise poultry to sell eggs as profit that will be used to buy stationery and other school materials. At Morogoro Secondary, we have been conducting workshops that include students from all three schools, focusing on youth leadership and community problems here in Morogoro which the students want to address. All of these projects are designed with a focus on sustainability: after GSE California has left these students and a few teachers will take on full control of GSE activities here.
Throughout this process I have gotten to know the people and culture of Morogoro much better. These people are extremely kind; they pride themselves in being peaceful. They have a lot of character and laugh easily. It is very very rare to see an angry Tanzanian. I commented at the beginning of this trip that Morogoro is almost a cultural wasteland, but its culture took its time in exposing itself to me. I didn’t really get to see it until I spent more time one on one with the individuals.
There is a pervasive unifying element of hope and faith here. Everyone is religious here; when I mention I do not know if I believe in God they always ask “why?” flat out. They believe in miracles, and believe that anything can be achieved with the right combination of support from God and personal determination. It is really inspiring to see so many people with so much ambition. Every student here wants to be an engineer, a pilot, a doctor; they are determined. Morogoro is really a perfect place to plant GSE’s messages of leadership and motivation.

As one of the creative figures of gse in morogoro being as the chair person of gse branch at our school Mzumbe Secondary i do my best to thank every gse spirited member for being together on serving our VISION OF LEADERSHIP. I call every heart on this ” lets not look to the past where our parents have shown their deeds! its all shame and meaningless! They have filled The WORLD with every kind of Violence, There’s NO PEACE IN THE WORLD! world leaders stay around the tables cheating each other bcoz their Hearts are full of selfishness! this is Meaningless! No Truth! No Justice! Who is able to make straight the way of the WORLD? WHO LEADS THE WORLD?……lets put aside the past coz its meaningless to hold on it! What our fellow beings did has brought GREAT VIOLENCE…if not well taken GREAT DESTRUCTION is on the way! IF WE WILL NOT CHANGE NOTHING WILL BE CHANGED FOR CHANGES WILL BE BROUGHT BY THE CHANGED ONES!”

“Argentinian students-Mauricio, Veronica, Florencia, Noelia and me have finally arrived to Sebastopol after a long flight. We were all very anxious of meeting our hosts families, and our GSE friends. Everything is far more better and beautiful than what we had expected. Now that we have all settled in we are very happy, more relaxed and ready to start working in the community.”  - Virginia

Godfrey and Deogratius have also arrived from Morogoro Tanzania. It is wonderful to have everybody here in the same place, and we look forward to the progress we will be making over the course of the next weeks.

Hello everyone, This is Lucas- making a post from Bangkok Thailand. I’m out here visiting some relatives and I’ll be back in California on Christmas eve. I’ve heard from Yasha that things are going well back in Sonoma County. We presented to the West County School board recently and I heard we were recieved warmly. We will be making presentations at Analy, Windsor and El Molino starting in February to invite more people to participate in our program. More people = a greater positive impact on the communities where we are working. With more travelers we can do larger projects, and with more local participants (this goes for Tanzania, Peru, and Argentina as well) more people will hear of our efforts, and we can expand our network. Through our goals of improving our communities, and building relationships with other communities, we can continue to build a positive organization and establish “grassroots international relations”. We can represent ourselves, and our values through working with our international partners.

Please feel free to use this blog as a means to communicate your thoughts, suggestions, observations, and ideas related to GSE! This way, participants all over the world will understand the progress and path of each branch of GSE, and we can inspire eachother to continue our work!

I wish you all happy peaceful holidays

Lucas Oshun

Hi guys I feel so proud of you for the step that we have taken until now. Frankly speaking the founders of this organization has done a lot and they are still doing good things.

It is my hope that we will make our organization to grow and grow and grow until it is known everywhere in the world.

Thanks my dear students

Godfrey Deogratius from Sokoine University of Agriculture Tanzania

This is the first post of the GSE blog. This blog will be a means for people in all GSE locations to communicate with each other, and inform each other about our progress week to week.

Please post some information about any new developments with GSE in your community, and or questions and comments for your fellow studetns internationally.