Day 8

Another day in San Vicente. We started with a visit to IADIS. I don't remember  the acronym but it is a school for young people with disabilities. Both physical and mental.  There is a difficulty in Argentina for children with disabilities in that families don't know how to stimulate and support them. Fortunately for San Vicente and the surrounding communities there is this school where they get some individual attention, education that fits their abilities, and some life skills training. It is a primary school, although some students were older than 5th grade age. As many as 60% could be mainstreamed if they had appropriate support at home, but there is a disinclination to work with them at home because of cultural stigma and the lack of understanding of how to do it. The piece of land that the school is on was donated by the man next door who had a child with disabilities. The students are there most of the day, they have breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack at the school. They have a special bus that goes out into the campo and brings them to school each day. The parents pay a fee. There is some money from the state and the federal government, but they rely a great deal on money they make from recycled plastic. Because San Vicente is small, the city picks up plastic one day, metal another, and "wet" garbage another day. There is also a large bin in front of the school where people drop off their plastic. The students separate the plastic  bottles by color, clear, green, odd sizes (shampoo etc) and also remove the tops. They have a hydraulic press that compacts  the bottles in 30 kilo blocks which they then sell to a company that shreds the plastic and makes fabric out of it. There are 42 students and 18 that they work with in other schools. They also have a garden project that provides herbs and vegetables for the kitchen and flowers that they pot up and give to mothers on Mothers Day. They have a small woodshop where the students make benches and little tables from "found" wood that they recycle. They also buy rolls of plastic tubing that they measure and heat seal and cut into different sizes to sell as trash bags. In some sense it is a sheltered workshop based on recycling. Interestingly, the idea for the compacter came from the school who took it to the local technical school. It took two years to get back a working machine, mostly because of lack of funding for materials. The school's machine has a lever that controls the hydraulic for safety and student control. The idea has been picked up nationally and there are at least two other automatic "crushers" working in the country. There should be some good photos of the school and the students.
Next we went off to the plaza. For a small community(4,000) San Vicente has a big and beautiful plaza of which they are very proud. Guillermo, our host and twice past district governor has been to many conferences and countries. He was in Hiroshima and was very impressed by the peace garden. For the centenary of Rotary, the club here created a Japanese style "peace" garden with rocks, green plants, running water and a stylized  crane sculpture. It is full of symbolism-rocks for earth, green plants for life, running water for the passage of life, and a bridge over the water for the present moment, the point in life where we now are. The two stone blocks with plaques include the Four Way Test and a tribute the the 100 years of Rotary. The park and plaza also includes an 800 seat sunken amphitheater that was done as a public works project inspired by Guillermo and Rotary when he was on the City Council. It is used a lot in spring and summer for concerts, events, graduations, the community band (ala Stonewall Jackson Brigade Band) .  Also in the park, aside from monuments to the founders and the sister city in Piedmonte, is a carousel that is a Rotary project. It runs on the weekend and the money from it provides scholarships to 90 students for the school across the boulevard. However, the big fundraiser for Rotary happens in the fall. In September there is a big exposition of agricultural equipment. 60,000 people come to San Vicente for the three day weekend. The Rotary Club is the only organization that is commissioned to run the "bar". They work in shifts as well as volunteers from groups that benifit from Rotary. They use 50-60 volunteers and clear 6000 dollars in the weekend.
After lunch, which included the quail that Stuart shot yesterday, beautifully cooked by Guillermo, we went to visit the fire house. The fire house and the fireman are a project that owes its existence to Rotary. In 1983 a fellow named Raul Carletti, came here from Santa Fe. His uncle there worked with the fireman. Raul recognized the need for a fire department here is San Vicente. Because he was in Rotary, he got the club here involved and they helped start the Volunter Fire Department. It took about two years to set up the legal structure and get all the local, state, and federal permissions. They have a board of directors of seven people and a working crew of thirteen. Six of the crew are three married couples. The youngest on the crew is 18 and the oldest on the board is 60, although Raul is 80 and this year will complete 50 years in Rotary. Rotary funded the building of the fire house and bought the first truck, a converted irrigation tanker. In 2000 there was a big fire and the truck wouldn't start and so Rotary began a push to improve things. With matching grants they have gotten $50,000 worth of equipment for the department since then. Now they have two trucks, an ambulance, decent suits, masks, EMT stuff. It is still all volunteer. They are responsible for an area about 20 kilometers in radius. Route 34, which is the Pan American Highway runs through here. It is a two lane paved road from Bolivia to Buenos Aires with a lot of truck traffic. There are an average of 34 traffic fatalities a day on the stretch in Argentina. A lot of the calls are traffic accidents. The other big problem is fires in the fields, especially after the wheat and soy harvests when the leftover stalks are dry and the weather hot. The firemen are all volunteers and come when the siren sounds. They also come after work and stay in the fire house until 11 or 12 at night and then go home. The trucks are used American or German vehicles from the eighties. They buy them with Rotary money, but they end up sitting in Buenos Aires in "customs" for usually a year where the salt air hurts them and pieces of equipment disappear. So they have some maintenance issues. The chief, Gabriel, has been a volunteer for 26 years and the chief for 16, very dedicated. His wife, Fabiana, has been a volunteer for 7 years. They have a four year old son who Gabriel says has been a volunteer for five years. Only the last couple of years have they gotten any state or federal funding and that is for equipment. Money for gasoline, suits, electricity, building maintainence, etc comes from raffles, bake sales, dances, community donations (sound familiar). Rosa who is a Rotarian and is hosting Joe does all the accounting work free and Melina,  another Rotarian who works for Rosa does all the official paper filing free. It is all a pretty amazing Rotary-community volunteer project and the department has a great reputation in the community and surrounding area.
After that we went to the local tv station with Laura, who was part of the team that came to the US and Beblo, a Rotarian whose passion is to work with youth. He works with Rotaract clubs all over the country. He has been a team leader and spent three years on Rotary International Council because of his great success with youth. The Rotary retention of Rotaract members for the country is about 2%. This district has 11%, mostly because of Beblo. San Vicente has had five district governors, six team leaders, and seven team members. The current president, Josefina, was part of a team that went to Wisconsin and northern Michigan.
Then we were off to a Terciary Institute. Half of it is a technical school. The government is putting a lot of money into technical schools. A student can come out at the age of eighteen with a degree and ready to work in a variety of fields or go on for more training. The other part of the school trains teachers for kindergarten through secondary school. We sat in front of a combined classroom of mostly young women and fielded questions about US education, services for blind and visually impaired. Joe explained the community college system and Stuart talked about Kappa Alpha and it's scholarship programs. He had to work a bit to correct the impression that they had about fraternities that comes from the movies and tv ( animal house). Pam described student services and how she works. It was an interesting session.
Before the meeting tonight, the students from IADIS presented a program of folk dances. It was touching and sweet. We gave our presentation and it was well received. This baña cauda is a little bit different than the one from around Genova in Italy. That one uses olive oil with garlic and the one here uses cream with garlic and anchovies. The " bath" is heated and kept warm like a fondue and you dip cut up vegetables in it to cook a bit. We had potatoes, carrots, celery, broccoli, califlower, onion, sweet red pepper and some raviolis. So it wasn't all vegetables. The last toast of the evening was lemon ice cream mixed with pink champagne, but we got to bed at a decent hour. Rosa keeps telling me that grappa, pisco, and the champagne mixture is good for the digestion.