Centro de Cultura in El Valle, Panama

Through funding and inspiration from the Fundacion Parroquia de San Jose, the El Valle area now has a “Centro de Cultura”. This was started earlier this year to provide cultural workshops for the local kids. The workshops are held in a large room behind the main church, and are administratively staffed by ex-pat volunteers with assistance from the librarians in our local library. The classes are taught by professionals in each field. The following classes will continue until the end of October, at which time we will take a break until we re-start in mid-January:

Guitar: taught by Emanuel with seven students. We are hoping to start another guitar (basic) worshop, a workshop for keyboards, as well as a children’s choir. The current group of students has participated in two recitals since they started learning guitar in late April!

Dance: due to popular demand (!) we now have two groups of dance workshops: Ari teaches the older girls and Luz teaches the young ones (3-5). In early August the dance class performed a short program for a standing-room only audience! Their beautiful tutus were made by a group of ex-pat volunteers.

Art: our teachers work at the Museum of Contemporary Art and are supported by two local aides. This is the longest running class, having started with a summer program. The projects have varied from basic drawing and color, to painting, building three-dimensional works with a variety of supplies (toilet rolls, fabric, lots of glue!, etc.), leaf stamping...you name it! At the end of each art
session, there is an exhibition of work (chosen by each student) in the El Valle library. Also, the work of two students was honored by the 20-30 Club (a Rotary-like service organization); they were given wonderful prizes (bicycles!) and a weekend in the city for the entire family.

We want to have an intense “summer” program; do you have ideas for a class which could last about two months? Or would you like to volunteer to teach or be an aide for a workshop? Contact Christine (shevek26@live.com) or Barbara (tbcamph@aol.com). We can provide translators if your Spanish isn’t up to the challenge of teaching. We feel so fortunate to have this connection with the local
population!

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