Helping Community: We Feed Back

The United Nations World Food Programme has organized an online helping community called "We Feed Back" to help feed the world's hungriest children.  It is a informal organization because anyone can go to the website and donate money to feed hungry children.  It is part of the United Nations, and is made to make it easy to help people.  People who want to "join" the  community can join and then use a credit or debit card or PayPal account to help pay for meals for children. 

The website can be accessed in: French, English, Italian and Spanish.  The best feature is the "Sharing" calculator to show how many children you can feed based on the cost of dish that you eat.  For example, if you want to "share" a meal of "Chicken and Rice" and you usually pay 6.00 for it, then if you "donate that amount of money, then you will feed 24 children!  Wow, that is amazing, if I just share one meal a week, I can help feed 24 children. 

Check it out if you want to help calculate how much you can help hungry children by sharing a meal!  The website is at:  http://wefeedback.org/home.  You can also access the Spanish language version at: http://wefeedback.org/es .

Virtual Community: Scratch-ers

While doing some research for my teaching I discovered an interesting on-line community of Scratch-ers. It exists at the Scratch website and the members are an informal group of young people who share their animated productions made with Scratch. It is free to join -- just provide basic information and submit your application. Scratch is a simple to use programming software developed by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) to teach young people (K-12) the fundamentals of computer programming. Kids from all over the world make art, stories, games, and music with Scratch and then upload them onto the Projects site. You can watch other members' videos and then comment on them, and you can also download other projects and then "remix" or change them. I noticed that many Scratchers (people who create with Scratch) use characters from other members' videos in their own. SO they are really creating this Scratch universe - or virtual community. The website has "Featured" projects and the most popular -- so it seems the community is also a little competitive too.

I was interested in this type of community because I am looking for a program to be able to make my own video games to use in my English classes. I am not sure this is the place for me, so I will keep looking for more video game-making communities.

It looks like a lot of fun making your own animations and video games -- if you are interested in learning more about basic programming through making simple animation, art, music, and video games, check it out at: www.scratch.mit.edu

Local Community: El Gandule, Santurce

El Gandule is a barrio in Santurce near parada 18.  It is an interesting local community because the people have a lot of community spirit.  It is an informal community of people who live in the area, many for generations. It is a very modest neighborhood, with a mix of business, tall apartment buildings, and smaller older, wooden houses.

People in El Gandule work very hard and many have a lot of pride in taking care of their homes.  Many people go to many of the neighborhood church.  The largest church in the neighborhood is the First Baptist Church.  They have many community activities and services here, including an outstanding Head Start program. Many El Gandule community members work in the Head Start school and take good care of the children.  They want to be sure the children have a safe and healthy environment to grow up well.  Even though the area struggles with crime and poverty, most people of El Gandule are friendly and helpful especially to neighbors.

I like El Gandule because my son attended the Head Start at the First baptist Church there.  I was very impressed with the community, especially the people who work hard to make life better for the kids.

If you would like more information about El Gandule and the First Baptist Church Head Start, visit them at: >>need to add  the address and some contact information
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Professional Community: College English Association (CEA)

College English Association - Caribbean Chapter is a professional organziation for professors of English. It is a formal organization that requires a yearly membership dues.

I have been a member of the College English Association Caribbean Chapter since 2009. They have conferences twice a year here in Puerto Rico.

In 2010 I presented a paper at the Spring CEA-Caribbean chapter conference about the Caribbean.

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