Volunteering

I started the volunteer component of my study abroad today, and it seems like it will be internship part II for me, only in Spanish. For those of you who don’t know about my internship last semester, it was with a producer for the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.  As such, I learned the very basics of FinalCut Pro, the software that every big time editor uses (which is to say nothing about my own status as an “editor”).  Another tidbit about my internship: I had very little interest in the media aspect of communication, until I realized that there are good media out there (NewsHour, and the current program I am working with). I thought FinalCut Pro was hard to learn in English, but sure enough, it is even harder in Spanish.  Nonetheless, I can’t imagine being able to do the work that I am doing without my previous and minimal experience!

A little bit about the organization I am now involved in… it is called AMUTED, which is a Spanish acronym that translates to Association of the Development of Women Weavers.  Despite the name, the weaving is more of a secondary aspect of everything they do.  Contrary to what I originally thought, I was placed here because of my major in communication, not because of my love of textiles J 

Quetzaltenango is an urban area in the midst of many smaller rural pueblos, so the workers of AMUTED are able to make trips about once a month to each pueblo to offer their services.  It also serves as a sort of home base for rural women to come to take advantage of some of the same services.  And these services? There are too many to remember and to name, but there are conferences on various things, for example, women’s health, domestic violence, disease prevention, empowerment of indigenous women, etc.  There are also the classes for weaving.  The way I understand it, the weaving is a sort of incentive for the husbands to allow their otherwise privilege-less wives to travel to AMUTED.  This way the women can at least learn a trait that can bring in a little bit of income for the family (which is empowering in itself).  The cool thing about the Mayan culture is it has a strong emphasis on gender equity, but the tragic thing is that it has been overcome by the machismo that is so present in the rest of the Latin American world.

So anyway, another main aspect of the organization (and where my work comes in) is AMUTED TV. It’s on channel 4 of Cable X, which happens to be the cable I have in my house here, so I will be able to watch the programs I work on!  It has indigenous women as the “anchors” and brings in guests to speak about the same stuff I mentioned above.  So, like my internship, my work will involve a lot of sitting in a room watching the same clips over and over, watching and listening for errors, syncing sound, all that stuff.  I really like editing, but am glad that there will be opportunities to actually interact with the women.  If a want and am able to, I can travel to the nearby villages. 

The other two girls who are working at the same place are giving psychological services to the women.  Although they get to work one-on-one with the women, I wouldn’t want these women’s mental health riding on my scant knowledge of psychology!