Growth in Argentina
As promised, I'm keeping you up-to-date on activities here in Argentina.
I received the letter about Bolivia and am glad to know that someone is active there. I wrote to the Sister in Brazil, got a reply, and Joan will visit her next week. I am sending you our program of events along with a flyer that I prepared as an introduction to RC. The program will speak for itself.
Thanks to Ester (Pelusa) de Grassi, Maria Bonasich, and Norma Pexos, the day in Parana went off brilliantly. They had gathered forty women, all of whom are now eager to start classes. So these three are now instructors. Their preparation has been given in five different workshops which they attended during this year, each of one day's duration.
On my return from Parana, I met with four men who are committed to continuing with RC in the men's group we call E.Co. (which means Community Listening). We are going to do an intensive of four meetings in which they will take turns leading, and if they are ready after that, we will consider responding to invitations we have gotten to go to other places to start groups for men. These four have been meeting since last November on and off.
Alicia Ochoa and I will lead the Santiago workshop for university people. After that I expect that a group will start there. One of our barrio women, Rosa Nagel, went to Mendoza, another large city, in early September to give a day workshop, and now twelve women are meeting every Saturday to do RC. I visited them for an hour when I was there for other reasons and found them very enthusiastic. Another small town has a group of eight women who have finished ten classes, taught by Sister Ana Maria Rodaro (who was taught by me on an individual basis-she is seventy-six years old). She invited Adela Jordan, Celestina Zanetti, and myself to give a short workshop and to introduce a new group to RC. These people are getting tremendous help from this, and all say so openly and often.
Other effective leaders are Sara Maidana de Luna, who has launched three different groups in different places near Moreno and helped to lead workshops, and Luly, whose real name is Benselada Avellaneda de Albornoz, who has started a new group in Barrio San Alberto, after a few months' absence due to illness.
Later . . .
We have just had a fabulous workshop for leaders with fifty-six adults (fifty-four women, two men) and ten children who were minded by four adolescents. The venue was a school gymnasium where we had a hilarious game of football.
There has been extraordinary growth this year, and we now have a fine group of committed leaders who played key roles in the workshop. I presented a popular version of Harvey's book The Enjoyment of Leadership, using the term "animation," since "leadership" has negative overtones here. The ten points I gave them are as follows:
- I have decided to lead.
- When I am present, everything goes well.
- I am so brave.
- There's no hurry.
- I trust other people.
- I have goals.
- I am not alone.
- I can make mistakes and I can correct them.
- I never compete.
- I am trustworthy.
I did demonstrations with most of these topics.
Two highlights from the workshop: a woman from a shanty town who said, "You have no idea what it meant to me to get an invitation to this workshop, that you remembered us"; and another who said, "It is the first time I ever felt important, that I mattered."
Ronnie Rafferty
Buenos Aires, Argentina