Breaking New Ground; Seeing for Miles

Greetings everyone,

I hope you’re all doing very well! 

Since returning to Dominica from my holiday leave, I have been quite busy.  As mentioned in previous blogs, I had been planning and developing cricket opportunities for youth with members of the Dominica Cricket Association and the West Indies Cricket Board.  Well, two of the first events we had planned were implemented during the month of January thus I had to get right back into the “swing of things” upon coming back to my village. 

The first cricket event that we developed was for mid-January and it involved young adults who exuded interest in the sport of cricket.  The purpose of this workshop was to teach those enthusiastic young adult cricketers the fundamentals of coaching cricket to children.  This session was the preliminary step to bringing organized, sustainable youth cricket programs to Dominica.

This cricket coaching workshop empowered the participants by instilling coaching techniques to them from respected cricketers from the island.  The Dominica National Cricket Team coach and a player instructed the session.  They did a fabulous job training each participant how to teach others the proper ways of bowling, batting, and fielding (basics of cricket).  The trainees learned skills of how to not only teach cricket to others but they also learned how to work with children which was a major focus of the workshop as well.  ScotiaBank, previously mentioned in another post as the main sponsor of our youth cricket initiative, is donating youth cricket equipment to each community on the east coast of the island so that these newly trained coaches can develop the children on a weekly basis.

One very exciting development is that the trainees who attended this workshop will have the option to enroll in a week long, youth cricket coaching workshop where they will be officially certified as cricket coaches from the West Indies Cricket Board and the Dominica Cricket Association.  The people who are certified during this cricket coaching course will have their names placed into databases to be potential cricket coaches for upcoming tournaments and leagues around the island.  This professional training will be a great opportunity for these promising young adults who have limited job prospects.  Even if they do not become the next coach of the Dominican Cricket squad, this endeavor may spark an interest in them for a positive opportunity in the future.

The second cricket oriented event that was held in January was a youth cricket festival.  Kiddy Cricket, a ScotiaBank funded initiative and a partner of West Indies Cricket Board and Dominica Cricket Association, has been involved with developing cricket skills among youth on Dominica for more than a decade.  Since its inception, Kiddy Cricket has held yearly cricket tournament festivals servicing the more urbanized Roseau (the southwest part of the island) and Portsmouth (the northwest part of the island) areas where primary schools would compete against each other in a spirited yet enjoyable atmosphere.  Kiddy Cricket had yet to allocate resources to the less developed, often discarded east coast of the island.

After a few months of tediously planning the event and successfully coaxing the potential funders by the national cricket coach and me, Kiddy Cricket allotted resources for the inaugural youth cricket festival for the east.  The national coach explained to me that because they had a Peace Corps volunteer on the ground in the east to organize the area communities that they would attempt to hold the festival on the rural coast. 

The Kiddy Cricket organization’s reluctance with bringing their program east was unwarranted as over 100 youth, while representing their primary schools, traveled to Castle Bruce to compete on the village’s playing field.  The invited schools from the festival in the east spanned from the northern part of the Carib Territory to almost the most southern part of the island.  Actually, I didn’t know many of the participants who were from the southeast of the island as their communities are out of my range of communities I work with on a daily basis.  In fact, those villages have other Peace Corps Volunteers attached to them which made for an easy conversation starter with the children.

The planning process of the cricket festival took quite a long time but the resulting event was spectacular.  The youth were all very excited to be part of this event and it was scheduled on a beautiful day. The children adore the game of cricket and it is apparent that with a bit of organization, they can enjoy competing in it to even a further extent. 

The final match was an all Carib Territory affair where Sineku Primary defeated Atkinson Primary to claim the first championship of the Kiddy Cricket Festival of the east.  I was especially proud of the Sineku children as I know them all very well.  All of the Sineku Primary and Atkinson Primary team members will be invited to demonstrate their skills during one of the breaks of the West Indies and New Zealand test match which will be held at Windsor Park stadium in Roseau during the summer months.

The coaching clinic trainees from the previous activity were able to impart their knowledge upon the cricketers during this event through volunteering to manage the squads from each school.  The youth sports officers played a pivotal role in organizing and preparing each primary school for the event.  Also, many community members watched the event ensue on the playing field.  With three matches going on at once, there was plenty of cricket action to see as a source of entertainment. 

Sports for youth reinforce positive behavior choices and the best part about it is that the young person whose behavior is being positively reinforced usually doesn't realize it.  Sports are a unique opportunity to naturally impact youth in a positive way.  They simply enjoy the activity and reap the benefits to their personal growth.  I've realized this lesson within my own experience as a coach of various youth sports.  They believe that they are just enjoying their sport but while they are playing it they typically cannot see that choosing to take part in sports develops their character, teamwork skills, self-esteem, health, friendship, and many other important facets towards personal development.  Also, sports keep impressionable youth away from destructive behaviors like drug abuse or making other poor decisions. 

As for other initiatives, I am spending the majority of my resources towards developing programs with the East Dominica Children’s Federation and ChildFund Caribbean.  The main program I am developing is one called “Survivor” which will run for several months and it will equip youth with knowledge and abilities involving emergency rescue skills in case of a natural disaster.  Several landslides have been occurring on the east coast of the island recently and many people have unfortunately lost their lives.  With more trained young people, hopefully the damaging effects of this natural disaster will generate less of an impact on the villages.

Also, I am still tutoring children who are remedial in their school work on a weekly basis at area primary schools.  Evidently word got out among the college students in my village that I assist with assigned papers.  Now about six college students have requested my guidance with their twenty page research papers. 

I recently was one of the main speakers at a drug abuse prevention rally held on the east coast too.   Since my speech to all the grade four through grade six primary school students on the east, I have been pleasantly surprised with how many of them start a conversation with me about drugs.  Hopefully this awareness will lead to positive choices for them in the future.

My mom is coming to visit me in Dominica in mid-February.  She is thrilled to meet all the people and see all the places I have described to her for the past thirteen months.  I’m excited to show her all the places so she can experience them firsthand.  She has expressed interest in trekking the dreaded boiling lake hike and I gave her some kind words of advice to prepare for it:  “Mom, you know the stepper machine you work out on at the health club?  Well, you should consider increasing the resistance and the incline to maximum levels.”  It’s an immensely intense hike and I will definitely update everyone on my mom’s quest to conquer the boiling lake.  Hopefully we’ll have photo evidence of her journey!

Thanks again for all your support!

Joe

P.S.  As people from my hometown generously funded my trip back to Madison, WI for the holidays, they actually collected a bit more funds to designate money towards a gift for people from my village.  I bought two very high end footballs (soccer balls) with the money.  I gave one to an athletic child and the other one to an active adult who both play pick-up football consistently with their peers.  I explained to them that the footballs were  for all people from the village to play with but that they were responsible for them.  Everyone thoroughly enjoys playing with the new balls.  Thank you to the Madisonians for the gift!