Hi all,
Unfortunately, our July trip to Argentina has been indefinitely postponed due to San Pedro school closings in precautionary response to spreading incidents of the flu. We’re sending our well wishes for San Pedro’s good health and will keep you updated on Lesley without Border plans for the coming year. Thanks for your interest and support and check here toward the end of summer for more updates!
Lesley without Borders is happy to announce that we’re planning a return trip to the community of San Pedro in Buenos Aires, Argentina for July 2009. We’re excited to build upon our experiences from last summer and deepen the relationship we have with this community and these children. As always, our efforts are student-led and largely student-funded, so we’ll be needing support to make this happen, and we’ve already got a team working on fundraising.
We’ll be working with students ages 3-15 within two very under-resourced schools: Centro Educativo Complementario n°802 Villa Dipietri and Escuela especial N°501 Hena Yanzón. Our team of students will facilitate morning and afternoon expressive therapy sessions every day for one week during our visit. Both schools are located in the rural town of San Pedro and school director Alejandra Cebreiros is elated about our return trip.
We’re still open to accepting Lesley ET students from any specialization for the upcoming trip. Spanish skills are welcome but not necessary. We have a nice core group of interested folks right now that include students from art therapy, music therapy, and the intermodal track. Having a multi-modal team in San Pedro means we’ll be able to offer so much more to the children while we’re there.
We’ll have more information soon. Please remember that you can support our work in many ways: by donating your time, helping with our planning, and/or helping with our fundraising efforts. Thanks!
Hi all,
Our 2008 pilot project in San Pedro, Argentina brought us invaluable experience, many happy memories, and numerous opportunities to share our work with our larger music therapy and expressive therapies community. Jared, Jessica and I were honored to present our work at last fall’s PASSAGES conference; this was especially great because so many of our peers (who made our trip possible) were in attendance. Just last month we presented again at the annual New England Regional American Music Therapy Association (NER-AMTA) conference. For those of you that are attending the upcoming International Expressive Therapies Association (IEATA) conference in August, we’ll be there presenting, “Bridging Cultures: Expressive Therapies for Social Action,” and we’d love to see you!
There is a growing community of Lesley students interested in service and outreach projects, cross-cultural work, and committed to using the expressive therapies for social action. The Expressive Therapies Student Association (ETSA), led this year by Katina Idol and Rachel Kahn, has even decided to make this work an integral piece of their activities. In a move to combine and increase efforts, Lesley without Borders is ”merging” with the ETSA, and we’re happy to have a permanent home. With help from the ETSA, Lesley without Borders will select a new representative for each academic year, and make sure that our efforts continue and grow.
We’re thrilled that a first-year music therapy student, Julianne Parolisi, is taking the reigns for next year. Julianne has years of experience doing cross-cultural work and international service, she’s super passionate, and she’s an important leader for our upcoming project this summer (stay tuned for more info!).
~Irene
