Mini-Congreso Juvenil de Fe y Alegría, Cusco

"Welcome to the 2nd Region Youth Congress"

The Mini-Congreso Juvenil (Youth Mini-Congress) of the 3 Fe y Alegrías in the region of Cusco (FyA 20, FyA 21, and our favorite FyA 44) started last year. As part of the build up to celebrate the 50 years of Fe y Alegría being in Peru (1967-2017), the central office of Fe y Alegría in Lima sent out plans for a series of retreats dubbed “mini-congresos juveniles” that built up to the full congreso juvenil in Lima. Two students from each of the 80 Fe y Alegría schools in the country participated in the 3 day weekend event. The Cusco regional mini-congreso was the last “round” before the big one in Lima; 20 students from each of the three Fe y Alegría schools in Cusco participated in the mini-congreso that we hosted in Andahuaylillas at FyA 44 (but for some reason I never blogged about).

Last year's mini-congreso was a big success and all the students agreed that it should become an annual event. Organizing a yearly event for all 80 Fe y Alegrías in Peru would be very difficult (and expensive), especially since we're so far from the central office, but organizing an annual event between the three Cusco Fe y Alegrías was much simpler.

Follow the jump to read all about this year's mini-congreso.

A few months ago, we began planning for the 2^nd annual mini-congreso juvenil of Cusco. Once again we selected 20 students from each school. The pastoral staff at each school were reponsible for preparing 1 session each (our session was on leadership). There was also a mass, some prayers and other basic logistics to prepare. This year hosting duties fell on FyA 20, the first Fe y Alegría founded in Cusco (over 40 years ago), so they were also in charge of the sleeping and food arrangements.

This was a lot of firsts for me. It was my first time planning a retreat. It was my first time running retreat activities. It was my first time chaperoning students. It was my first time being the lead teacher on a trip. It was my first time waking up at 2AM to tell students that they didn't need to shout for the person lying next to them to hear them.*

Because most of the religious staff of FyA 44 were busy that weekend – Hermana Rosario had to go to Lima to teach a course, and Padre Eddy has parish priest duties on weekends – the bulk of the work of chaperoning and running our parts fell onto the rest of the pastoral team: María Fernanda (Mafer), Karla, and me. Mafer and Karla are student teachers, and part of my job is coordinating pastoral activities, so I was the default point person for a lot of, but it was definitely a team effort. Hermana Vilma was also kind enough to give up most of her weekend and come help out with a lot. I think I speak for all three of us young staff that her presence was most welcome.

Profe María, from host school FyA 20, gives the welcome.

The retreat itself was a lot of fun. We left the school at 5pm on Friday evening. Only 17 of the 20 students we invited showed up, but my concern is always for the people in front of me, so that didn't phase me. After an hour long bus ride to Cusco we arrived at FyA 20 where there were some basic welcome activities, dinner, and then a dance.

Friday was a very late night. I had to sleep in a classroom with all the FyA 44 boys and half the FyA 21 boys. Everyone slept on gym mats. The boys from FyA 21 had brought a tent, which they set up in the middle of the classroom. Our boys lined all their mats up together and huddled up together to share blankets, which reminded me of how we slept on the ride up to Qollyurritti.There's a lot of ways masculinity is really restricted here, but in terms of physical closeness to other men, Andean men are a great deal freer than American men.

I told the boys in my room that they were welcome to stay up, to talk, and to watch movies or play games on their cell phones, as long as they did it an acceptably low volume so as not to disturb anyone who wanted to sleep (i.e. Profe Benjamín). The boys from FyA 44 needed a reminder or two, but they figured it out. Our friends in the tent from FyA 21, however, did not. Perhaps they didn't realize that fabric walls block your line of vision but not your hearing. Perhaps they didn't care. Perhaps it didn't even occur to them. Either way I woke up 3 times throughout the night to tell them to quiet down (on top of plenty of gentler reminders before I had fallen asleep). Fortunately, on Saturday night they weren't nearly as disturbing.

Believe it or not, the boys woke up for a 5AM soccer match. They had begged for permission to start playing at 4:30, but the staff told them 5 was the earliest they could go out. When I was in high school I never wanted to wake up early. Maybe it's because I'm from a city and these students are from the country. Maybe they're just more energetic than I ever was. Either way, I was impressed. I skipped the soccer in favor of another hour of sleep with the guarantee that FyA 21 wouldn't wake me up this time.

Saturday morning the staff of FyA21 presented on the topic of the identity of Fe y Alegría until lunchtime. After lunch, there was an hour of break time. I saw some of my students practicing shooting hoops – they're studying basketball in gym class – and I gathered them together for a game. A few boys from FyA 20, including a boy wearing a Celtics cap, joined in the game. The fun of it was that no one was very good, so none of us took things too seriously. It was also nice to play a game with my students, to run around and just be people. It was an opportunity to connect in a way I don't usually do.

The afternoon's session on Social Media, presented by FyA 20, was pretty dull in my opinion. It was lots of lecturing and watching videos, and very little group interaction among the students. I wasn't the only one struggling to stay awake in the dark room while staring at the project screen, plenty of students were too, but I had the privilege of being non-essential staff for the activity, so I went back to the classroom and took a nap on my gym mat.

The evening activity was watching the movie Take the Lead, the DVD of which we at FyA 44 had spent an entire week searching for. We used it to tie into the theme of leadership on Sunday's session. The students seemed to like the movie, and the big kiss at the end got actual applause from the audience.

Sunday morning there was another early soccer match that I skipped. The scheduled part of the day began with mass, said by Padre Eddy. He gave a great homily that included a lot of student participation, he is trained as an educator after all. He also reinforced the idea that saying the penitential right prepares us for receiving communion. It's common here that people don't take communion because they haven't confessed. Or, in the case of funerals and weddings, adults don't take communion because they know they'll drink later (what would the Irish think of that!). Pd. Eddy wanted to encourage as many students as wanted communion to come up and take. “We should never let ourselves get too far from the sacrament” he told them.

A large group discussion about what makes a good leader. 

After mass it was time for Mafer, Karla, and I to present the topic of leadership. I'm really proud of our session. I think it was a good balance of large group discussion and small group activities. I ran the first hour. There was a large group discussion on leadership, with specific attention to the different leaders in the movie Take the Lead, followed by a small group activity analyzing the three aspects of leadership. I had done my prep by talking to the man who gives leadership trainings as part of his job, my father. He suggested the leadership is trinitarian: there's the leader(s), the followers, and the shared mission. The students found that to be a very helpful way of analyzing leadership, and one 5^th year told me it was the lesson he would most remember.

Hermana Elisa from FyA 21 leads a game.

Mafer and Karla ran a series of field-day style competitions during the break period. FyA 44 won the cultural trivia competition between the three schools. Afterwards, Mafer gave a short lecture on leadership and Jesus. We ended our session with an activity that Hermana Rosario proposed - each small group cut out images from newspapers of the “false leaders of today” (since Peru had just had the election) and presented a collage.

Funny anecdote: One group had clearly just picked any images of people they could find. I was trying to pin them down on it by pointing to different people and asking why they chose them. “Why is he a false leader?” I asked, pointing to a photo of a man that looked like it came from the obituary section.

“Well, ummm... you see...” the students struggled to invent something, “He's an old white man.” When talking about false/bad leaders, that was actually a pretty savvy response, so I tried to find something else.

“What about her?” I pointed to a picture of a particularly famous black woman.

“She's a pop singer and she-”

I cut them off. “She's not a pop singer, she's the first lady of my country, the United States of America.”

“Oh, well she looks a lot like that singer. How was I supposed to know?” 

“Well you could have read the caption. See here, it says “first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama.”

“Ai, Profe!” they said with guilty grins.

After that group, we made sure to ask every group why they had picked the images they had.

The mini-congreso ended with a goodbye lunch of rice, french fries, and meat balls. But the journey for FyA 44, it turned out, was far from over. Our bus was over an hour late to pick us up, due to the fact that it was also being used by a school from Arequipa to visit the Sacred Valley (where a lot of archaeological sites are). We all sat around, tired, waiting for the bus to come. We couldn't play any sports because the FyA 20 parents were doing a deep clean of the school.

After a while Sister Charlotte, a Franciscan sister of Mary from Ghana who works at FyA 20, invited us to see her house. Students are full of surprises. I thought they'd quickly be bored by the nuns' home. Instead, they loved it. A statue of 7 sisters martyred in China launched a very long discussion about mission work and then moved into a discussion of religious life itself. The students had all sorts of questions about that – Can you quit whenever you want? Under what circumstances can you leave? Do you miss your family? Why do you have to do whatever the superior says, what if you disagree with her? Can you be married and be a nun? But my favorite question asked about the martyrs came from a 4^th year girl who reminds me a lot of a friend that I refer to as my “other little sister”: “How did they get killed?” Sister Charlotte started to explain about the Boxer rebellion and anti-Christian sentiment in China. “No, Sister, did they get shot, or stabbed or what?” The answer is that their throats were slashed. This was sufficiently gory to satisfy my student that these nuns were cool.

One student in the group, a graduating 5^th year, told me a few months ago that she was interested in religious life. I set her up with Hermana Rosario and they chatted for 90 minutes. I mostly watched her reactions to a nun from a different order. She was giving Sister Charlotte her undivided attention, and had plenty of questions. If the bus hadn't finally showed up, she might still be there asking away. She might become a nun one day, she might not. As the pastoral sub-coordinator* at her school, it's not my job to convince to become a nun, but it is my job to give her the resources to discern that well. We had a nice little debrief on the bus after leaving Sister Charlotte's house.

Finally, at 6pm on Sunday, 49 hours after leaving, we were back at the door to FyA 44. We said a quick goodbye and the students all trudged off to their homes, tired, relieved that they had an extra day to hand in their homework, and hopefully a little more full of the Spirit then they were when they signed up to take part in the mini-congreso.

*Much respect to the sleepaway camp counselors in my family, most especially my sister, for putting up with young people's nighttime nonsense all summer year after year.

 *Hermana Rosario is the co-ordinator.