Sunday, May 21, 2017

Week 3: Yipee!

Hi everyone, we are just finishing up our third week here in Georgetown, Guyana! We started our week off by celebrating Manny’s 20th birthday on Monday. He was able to celebrate his day with a delicious breakfast made at our accommodations and finished it with Churches Chicken that night.
After a full day of classes on Monday we were able to meet with Susan Isaacs, the managing director at the Guyana Foundation to discuss a future collaboration. The Guyana Foundation is a charitable organization that maintains community-based centers located in various regions with a high incidence of suicide. They work with local hospitals to make counselling readily available as well as provide 3-month skills training to improve access to economic opportunities. We hope to work with them in one of their centres for a couple weekend sessions.
             
On Tuesday two of our peer educators, Shannon and Haylee worked with the Guyana Responsible Parenthood Association (GRPA) to discuss mental health, depression and suicide at the Guyana National Shipping Corp Dock. It was an amazing opportunity to reach individuals outside of our regular classrooms.

            We finished off our classes for the week and were lucky enough to travel to Berbice on Friday afternoon and visit Megan E., Megan B., Kate, and Robbie, our peer educators located there.  We were all very excited to see each other for the first time in 3 weeks and got the chance to discuss our separate experiences in this culture. They were amazing hosts and cooked us the best meals while we stayed with them. On Saturday we were lucky enough to meet Ravi who greeted us with kindness and generosity and drove all 8 of us to beach 63 and fed us the most delicious food. Overall, we had a fantastic day swimming in the ocean and spending the day in the sun.  We loved to see another region of Guyana and cannot wait to see our friends again this Friday to celebrate Independence Day in Georgetown!
                

Best,
Haylee, Shannen, Shannon, Manny

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