Develop Leaders in At-Risk Communities, Costa Rica

Every week in the foundation, we have many different programs, meetings and mentoring session. None of those things, however, would exist without our #1 most powerful activity - the WALKTHROUGH. Maybe you've heard us talk about them or seen the photos, but what really IS the walkthrough all about? We spend intentional time every week walking through the communities we work in to learn how to best care for them. What do we hope to accomplish?

-Meeting new people

-Creating deeper relationships with people we already know

-Listening to people tell about their lives in the community to better learn how to help

-Listening to people tell about what has happened in the last week in the community to find opportunities to serve

-Identifying people who are open to being mentored

-Learning to work together well as a team with those on the walkthrough

-Explaining what we are doing in the community as an organization

So you may now be thinking, how is an actual walkthrough executed? There are a few important pieces here that help us acheive the best possible results in the walkthrough.

First, gathering together pre-walkthrough is vital in order to check in with each other, make sure our team and volunteers are doing ok and then allowng the team leaders to share a little bit about the community and things to keep in mind. Once we have arrived at the site we gather together to be divided into our outreach groups. These groups are set up in the best way possible to allow for good chemistry and team dynamics. Each team will be given directions on where to go, what to do and when to come back together. At this point, each little team begins to walk through the community to introduce ourselves to people we do not know and to check in with those we do know. Any conversation you get into with young people and adults is a huge victory, and opportunities to play with and get to know children are wonderful. Once we return together, it is a Boy With a Ball tradition to take 15 to 30 minutes to discuss how things went and who we each talked to. This allows us to learn from each other and to be encouraged by the great stories, but it also allows BWAB staffers to take notes and be able to follow up on some of what has happened in the conversations. Additionally, it is a great time to ask questions and learn together as we confront new challenges and see God do great things.

And with that, the walkthrough is done! Many times afterwards our teams and volunteers head to eat and spend time together. A walkthrough can be done in any community and is beneficial in all types of organizations. So what are you waiting for, let's walk and see what's in store!

One element that dramatically differentiates Boy With a Ball from almost every other non-profit organization in existence is our core focus on going to young people and their families where they live rather than sitting in a building, waiting for them to come to us. We believe in outreach as a powerful and vital method for walking into a young person’s life.

Boy With a Ball begins our work in a city in slums for two reasons:  First, people are drawn to being a part of something big and adventurous and walking into their city’s most difficult neighborhoods captures their hearts. Slums are also a major global issue that people around the world care about. One billion people worldwide live in slums (Pithouse, 2008) and the figure will likely grow to 2 billion by 2030. (UN-HABITAT, 2007) These slums concentrate a large number of people living in abject poverty within a relatively small geographic area. As a result, they have tremendous capacity to impact a city in a negative way when they are left undeveloped.

A second reason for beginning in slums is that outreach is easier to do with people who are at the end of themselves than with people who have greater resources and options. It is easier to be open to looking up when you are trapped in a hole than when you are standing on a mountain. For our team members, working with people in difficult situations allows them to find the openings and humility that people need to have in order to be open to growing. As our team has learned to work in at-risk communities, they develop the abilities necessary to learn the sensitivities required for being impactful in communities that are better situated economically.

Boy With a Ball exists to reach, befriend and develop people. More correctly, Boy With a Ball exists to reach and develop young leaders. While our organization has a specific focus on helping young people in economically disadvantaged communities, we know that is not what determines if someone is okay or not.

We cannot let superficial things like how much money someone has determine whether we will fight for them. This means that Boy With a Ball is called to care about not only youth and families in at-risk communities but also people in middle income and higher income situations as well. On another level, even if we were to limit our focus to working with youth and families living in poverty, we have seen that we cannot help them thrive without also fighting for their neighborhood, their community, their city and their country to flourish.  We believe that poverty is not the problem of the poor but the problem of an entire people, requiring that an entire society grow their way out of it.