Awaken Your Inner Gaia

Team Gaia Acts Out for Workers Rights

Team Gaia just finished up a pretty hefty side project for the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission.

Our part in the event was presenting to the audience skits that we wrote which showed young adults examples of things like sexual harassment in the workplace, understanding your workplace rights, and even knowing how to dress for your job. We gathered up our actors, which included Karis and me, and got to work on our five skits, while our filmers got their cameras ready and JC prepared the audio.

The morning of our performance, we we were greeted by Anthony Butler, the HRC's education and community liaison, who also presented, explained and discussed our skits with the audience once each one was acted out. The event took place Saturday, Sept 20th in the Jacksonville Main Library, located downtown. Though the walls weren't packed with an avid audience, we did have a good amount of people show up (especially considering there was an Obama rally a few blocks away in Met Park). Nonetheless, we filmed the entire event, so we can still spread the word!

All of us here at TG worked very hard on the project and it turned out to be a big beautiful success!! Look for the videos online.

World of Nations Celebration

About once a month a group of teens from all over Jacksonville, Fl meet together to discuss social issues that affect them daily. This group has come to be called Jax Teen Alliance!!!

Once convened, the teens use their brain juice to solve issues in the community. The rest of Team Gaia and I are a part of this wonderful group as well as LOUD, One Jax, City Kids Arts Factory, PAL, and The Bridge to name a few.

Our purpose, as a whole, is to:
A) Build a sustainable, replicable coalition of youth
B) Be a catalyst for youth voice
C) Create a dialogue across differences
D) Create a space for youth to empower themselves
E) Create opportunities for youth to be heard by the entire community
F) Dialogue leading to action leading to change
G) Provide a viable future for tomorrow’s youth

Within this supergroup, we are divided into four groups or teams to work on a topic of our choosing. My group is tackling prejudice and stereotyping.

Our group decided that in order to fully bring awareness to the community we needed to have a booth at the annual World of Nations Celebration at Metro Park in Downtown Jacksonville this past May weekend. After months of anxiety stemming from trying to get people committed to the project searching for and gaining sponsors, and organizing some way to get people’s attention at the booth we finally came to the agreement that we would ALL work together as a team to make the booth a success.

We decided that a mural would be one way of getting our message across and we invited people to add their own thoughts to the panels we started. To make it a little more exciting we also filmed a documentary filled with interviews of people expressing their thoughts on the subject, “What do you see when you look at me?”

And through all the hard work, we came out really good. Better than I ever expected. We ended up having T-shirts, a documentary interview, and stamps for the visitor passports, as well as tons of fun! Check out the photos at www.teamgaia.com and see for yourself!

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Mother's Against Paco

So I was reading this article and learned…

Argentina has become the dumping ground for South America’s low-quality, cheapo, cocaine or paco. In the five years that paco starting showing up on the streets, 15,000 people have become seriously addicted, and some have died!

Bilma Acuña’s son Pablo Eche sold everything he owned to get his fix, as well as committing violent robberies. He destroyed his house, sold the land, and lived on the streets cold and alone until his Grandma took him in. “The majority of the kids are using it here,” said Acuña. “My son saw what was happening with the kids in the streets that were using paco, and he always said he wouldn’t get caught up in that. But he did.”

She, as well as a group of other concerned Mothers have organized the only defense against the dangerous drug, which is nothing more than a highly addictive, smokable, cocaine residue, which is pretty much the left over crack of left over crack,that has killed thousands.

What is their answer to combating this noxious narcotic?

Recently, Acuña led a walk through the streets with about 18 other women. They pointed out the residences of current paco dealers. This area of town hadn’t been visited by the police in seven years. The Argentine Government has yet to produce a plan the tackle the addiction.
So Argentine citizens, led by the Mothers, are taking control of the situation. Acuña handles dozens of calls a week from people wanting to help their friends and family with the addiction. She refers them to clinics and urges others to join the force.

It’s unfortunate that there really isn’t anything many people could do in a situation like this one. But I think that if these Mothers could brew up a storm, the Argentine government may finally pay attention to the thousands of people becoming addicted and hardcore smash into those drug dealer’s pads and confiscate all the drugs in the facility.

I want an adventure

I have decided what would solve all of my problems for the rest of my life – forever.
Well…maybe not forever, but this is something I really, really, really want to do.
I believe it will change my life forever. What is it, you may ask?

The Peace Corps. Yup. Next big thing in my life. After high school, of course. And after college. It makes sense. I have always wanted to travel and I have always wanted to help people. (I do this already at Team Gaia.) So why not combine both? Haven’t any of you ever thought of it?

I bet you’re wondering how I got this into my head. My interest grew when I had to interview a teacher about her Peace Corps adventure, and I knew from that moment on that I want, want, want to be a part of this amazing organization. My teacher travelled mainly to Czechoslovakia.


And she really believes it was the best experience she’s had in her entire life. As a teacher, she taught people English after the fall of communism, considering no one cared to learn Russian anymore. She also taught a deaf Russian woman English and some American Sign Language so that she could teach the deaf children English. Oddly enough, she also met her husband there, and recently returned to show her husband’s family their two gorgeous children. She said that now, they don’t even need the English program she taught in, and they finally got their first McDonald’s.

She went on to tell me something else that I really agree with – America can no longer be so isolated from the world. If we do, imagine the horrible isolated beliefe that may occur! Americans would be elitist pigs and so big headed and arrogant with good ol’ American Pride that we could…I don’t know, be blind sided by an attack or have all the other countries hate us (as if they dont already do…). I want to be apart of this anti-meatheadedness. I want world peace. I want people to stop dying of AIDS in Africa. I want to help feed the starving children of the world.

Now that I know what I want to do and why, how do I get into the Peace Corps?

1. Become at least 18. And be a citizen of the United States. OK that one is almost complete -easy.
2. Having a four-year college degree by the time you’re ready to leave for the Peace Corps will help your chances of acceptance. Well, considering I plan on getting a professional degree, that should work out.
3. Work/Volunteer experience. I do that already – Team Gaia again. We have youth dialogue meetings where we discuss and try to solve local issues...like my group is about prejudice, and we are going to have a booth at a local fair thing called World of Nations to spread awareness!
4. It’s always good to know another language. I know Arabic. Hell-yeah! Thank you heritage!

OK so they offer an online quiz to see if you qualify – so I just filled it out to see if I fit the bill and, guess what? I do!

So, I hope you all wish me great luck on the voyage called Preparation, and more on the journey called Peace Corps.