I actually made it to Tirúa, which was the last community devastated by the tsunami of 2010 before the end of December.  It got the biggest waves of all….30 meter high waves!

January has found me practically living in the public library of Concepcion, working on organizing the results of the questionnaires and getting those results from each school sent off to the schools, the psychologists working with the schools, the school district administration, and some individual teachers (who had expressed interest in receiving the results). I finally got all of the results finished and sent off after a massive amount of work!

I visited and returned to receive the completed questionnaires in 32 schools and 12 refugee camps. There were actually two different sets of questions in each questionnaire, which needed to be tallied separately. The number of students processed in the questionnaires ranged between 150 students per school in the larger schools and 30 in the smaller schools (with two separate questionnaires per child, you must multiply 150 and 30 by two for each school and consider if you wouldn’t feel just a bit brain dead afterward like I do!).

WHAT PROJECT SANANDO CORAZONES GOT DONE

As I thought about the title in the sense of “where do we go from here?”, I realized that first I need to  recount where “here” is….kind of like the traditional “end of the year report to start the new fiscal year”.  It has also occurred to me that this is not only the “customary” thing to do; it’s also my responsibility! You need to know where your money, time, and energy spent in prayers went.

Don’t worry, keep reading, I won’t burden you with how many rolls of toilet paper I bought.

Since March of 2011, I have visited 53 communities in the earthquake/tsunami zone between Rancagua and Tirúa (on the border of the 9^th region); the routes being from Rancagua to Pichilemu on the coast, then down the coast, along with certain of the interior communities.

Those visits included:   gathering information from officials in the Municipal departments, the school directors, the community health center personnel, community leaders, leaders in the refugee camps, and any psychologists I can make contact with who work with the schools or public health centers.

The next step was to get permission to administer the questionnaires in the schools and /or refugee camps in the community. In the majority of schools, I was allowed to meet with the teachers to explain about the project and the questionnaire, giving instructions to the teachers so that they would administer the questionnaire to their students. That way the student felt more comfortable, being in their regular school environment to answer the questions and receive explanations from the teacher in a way that could be easily understood. The teacher also answered questions which came up about certain points on the questionnaire.

I have given 23 psycho – therapeutic and motivational seminars to teachers (and in several areas groups of psychologists working through the Education department with the schools in their area). In these seminars I use a data projection system to show audio-visual motivational themes ranging from “Resilience” to Tommy’s Window power points. People have shared some good material with me along the way, so my data base of Psycho-therapeutic, inspirational, motivational material is becoming quite interesting in its scope.

In 30 of the 32 schools in which I have taken the questionnaire, I have left a complete set of psycho-therapeutic teaching materials and activities authorized by UNICEF, which Rafael Raygada and a team of friends translated into Spanish. Along with that material, are included two manuals by “CORE – Oakland, CA” on emergency preparedness.  Finally, I’ve been able to include in the “package” lots of spiritually motivating materials for the teachers to use with their students, and to strengthen their own faith.

In the course of my visits, I’ve been able to share those same materials with public libraries, municipal authorities, and personnel from the public health centers, and even individuals who showed interest in receiving that material. Some teachers, health professionals and psychologists  are even enthusiastic about starting a network to continue sharing material, as well as ideas and forming an on-line support group to assist with their work in the rural communities.

It’s not to be forgotten that along the way there’s been ample opportunities for sharing my faith and salvation with special individuals who the Lord has brought across my path in some of the strangest places and neediest moments. I’m constantly being confronted with the awesome thought: “Wow, did the Lord maneuver me all the way here right at such a critical moment for this reason or for that reason….or for both?  It’s an awesome realization to see how the Lord gets such perfect transcendental mileage out of each and every situation! It’s that feeling of miraculously being swept along on known missions with concentric circles of unknown missions incorporated within.  In fact it makes “Touched By an Angel” (TV drama) more relatable, even in just the human sphere.

WHERE WE’RE AT NOW

I’m including some excerpts (just a few examples) that I pulled out randomly from several questionnaires (as well as the original questionnaire so you can see the numbers of the questions).

That way you can get an idea of what I’ve discovered.

In reality children in all of the communities I’ve visited suffer continuing trauma from two earthquakes: one physical and one social.

The results are consistent from each of the schools, very few children escape trauma from one source or another.

It’s been interesting to note in comparison that in the two communities which are solidly Evangelical, the incidence of extreme trauma from the physical earthquake /tsunami is lower among the children. However, there is still a high incidence of social trauma in those children.

Yesterday I visited the director of education for the region of Bio-Bio and showed him the results of the questionnaires.  He had been a teacher in some of the areas that I visited so he was familiar with the social situations. He mentioned that the “social earthquake syndrome” has to do with dysfunctional families, alcohol and drug abuse, psychological and physical violence within the family and among members of the community, un-employment, psychological despair, and lack of motivation or hope for anything different in life.

Some of these factors have come to the “fore” after the physical earthquake and tsunami (especially with sources of employment having collapsed). In other cases the factors already existed and have only increased because of the added stress from the losses attributed to the earthquake and tsunami of 2010. In order not to use such negative terms as “hopeless situation”, he mentioned that the situation in the areas affected by the earthquake and tsunami were “extremely complex and difficult to deal with”.

WHAT NOW?

The director then went onto encourage “Sanando Corazones” to present an official project which could possibly be incorporated into the school districts of the Bio-Bio Region that would educate children in ethic and moral values, as well as give them tools to use in “Resiliency Training” in their personal lives.

I’ve just received a communication from the school district in the 6^th region where we took the questionnaires and did a workshop for the children. They’ve invited us to do a pilot program in some of their schools.

It seems like an interesting challenge!

Something must be done to help these children.

The teachers who work with the children understand…..some of their students come to class tired, distracted, unfocused in their school work, depressed because they were up the night before helplessly witnessing scenes of violence in their homes.

Many of the children have very low self esteem and lack the motivation to dream dreams of their own future prospects, much less fight to fulfill goals in their lives.

Some children fall into the trap of continuing the cycle of violence, abuse, early pregnancies (it’s  more and more common for girls 12 and 13 yrs. old to get pregnant, either through lack of caution or victimized by abuse), drug and alcohol consumption, etc. etc., etc.

It seems the Lord is opening the door to start something here in a “bigger” way as far as working with the schools in these areas. The idea would be to develop a program of character development, introduce relatable ethical and moral training (without the baggage of specific religious orientation attached), and instruction in the use of resilience tools in life skills.

That’s a biggy…..developing such a program!  Hummm, maybe that’s why it hasn’t been done yet.

…..any ideas, suggestions, helpful hints,  would be greatly appreciated…..even just plain prayer power, as it seems from my current perspective, a bit of a Mt. Everest type of challenge.