Today we did it. The Women's Exercise Program, here more commonly referred to as "Clases de Ejercicios para las Mujeres", has officially moved to the third floor of the library. This move took a lot of careful planning and discussion, since the Ecuadorian culture isn't something we have the firmest grasp on yet. For example, women may not attend classes at a new location because it is too far away from their house (change of location = 3 blocks). So after much deliberation, we decided a new location would bring more positive changes than negative. This decision also meant that today I called 50 out of the 125 women who have signed up for classes at some point to inform them of the move. My brain was such mush from the monotonous phone calls that I put on two different socks when changing for tae bo.
A couple highlights of having exercise classes on the third floor:
- the space is more than double the size of the community center we've been using
- we can network within the library members and have a central hub, from which all of our programs are run
- it is our own space, so we can leave equipment in the building (rather than lugging a scale, 3 blood pressure cuffs, 2 stethascopes, 4 binders of paper, speakers, and yoga mats to the community and back weekly)
- we can decorate the walls with nutrition posters and health information, so the space will slowly transform into a center for health/ preventative health clinic
- we get to see some awesome sunsets while doing sun salutations or tae bo routines
Needless to say, I'm excited about the move and what it means for this program. Also, I am pretty darn fluent at explaining where the library is, when classes start, and what to bring to class (eerily similar to how I can recite in my sleep proper flossing techniques in spanish thanks to our open clinic last weekend). Yay specialized spanish skills!
Hasta la proxima vez...
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