Columbia Opportunity Center Activities

By far the most excitement at the Opportunity Center this year was its move to a new location in the village. It was a wonderful experience with the participation of many children and youth throughout the moving process.

Our new "house" is more than double the size of our old center. It is hurricane-proof, with concrete block walls and a cement roof, and wide verandahs on three sides. It is a new building owned by a village woman who has agreed to let us use it for two years. In return, IAIA made a few major improvements, building a large interior wall and bringing in water and electricity. Jerry and Connie worked long hours for three weeks preparing the building, with the help of several village youth, who assisted with both carpentry and electrical work. Our work was frequently interrupted by curious villagers coming to see what was happening.

After packing up and cleaning out our old house, the pickup truck began the first of many trips back and forth to our new building. The bed of the truck was lined with eight small children, sitting with their legs crossed, each acting as a shock absorber for one piece of computer hardware. They felt so proud of their responsibility as the truck traveled slowly back and forth on Columbia's bumpy dirt roads. Several older children transported the equipment from the truck to the building. It was a hot day, prompting a couple stops at the shops for soft drinks and ideals (frozen treats) in between trips.

After everything was moved, the children in our new neighborhood immediately became impatient, and Connie opened the center as soon as the electricity was working. Since Columbia is a large village (now around 2,000 pop.), most of the children that came were using a computer for the first time. It is very rewarding to watch them discovering the world available to them through computers. Many quickly became regulars, and are often waiting on weekend mornings to greet Connie as she arrives.

After the young people began to appreciate the computer lab as an important (and fun) village resource, a workday was scheduled, and many volunteers arrived, mostly young boys. We dug big stones out of the yard around the house, pruned trees, and gave the front façade of the Center a scrub and a little bit of color (right). A sense of "ownership" of the Center gradually took shape.

The Opportunity Center has become more stable as more managers have been trained, and its hours are now regular and predictable. Thanks to a successful Sister Village Benefit Dinner in Athens, Ohio in the spring, the computer lab remained open almost every day during the summer. It was an opportunity for many of the village children and youth to spend time with the computers. It also created an opportunity for two young women to gain important job experience and steady income as summer managers.

During the school year, evening manager Henrietta Ical presides over homework sessions, except for Sundays when Connie spends the night in her hammock at the Center. The seven computers are busy. Standard VI students from the primary school are engaged in more rigorous studies in an effort to boost their scores on the high school entrance exams, and often join the high school students researching and writing papers.

Many children enjoy using the computers during the daytime on Saturdays and Sundays, rotating every half hour or so. They complained loudly when Connie recently began a four-month Saturday afternoon computer course for seven young women and men. The children play educational games, practice typing, explore the on-line encyclopedias, listen to music and work on lessons provided to them. A movie is shown each Sunday afternoon, easing the homework demand for the computers. The Lord of the Rings is the favorite, by far, with the boys (left).

At the end of summer break and during the December holiday, children and youth are given the "arcade" password, and enjoy the less educational but lots more fun games that live on the computers. Suddenly, they're driving racecars through Yosemite National Park, flying helicopters and seaplanes, and challenging each other to football (soccer) games. It is a fun time for them.

Goals for COC for this year are to get connected to the internet and to find more assistance, so that the Center can provide even more opportunities, such as small business start-ups, in the near future.

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