Week 5 was game time, as my group had planned a 3 day event for our project, and Week 5 contained Days 1 and 2. I remember waiting in anticipation for these events to happen, not knowing at all how they would go, just hoping they'd be successful. 

Before I explain about these days, I feel like I should provide a little background about my project. When I arrived to Medellin, I was placed into a group with two other scholars, and told we would be working with Zippy Tour, a tour guide company in Comuna 13. When we met with Zippy Tour for the first time, they told us that they needed help with many challenges in the community, including waste management, noise pollution, lack of tourism regulation, increase in rent, and difficulties getting children to stay in school. We were initially appalled, knowing that there was absolutely no way that in 6 weeks we could fix any of those issues. We attempted to research data about Comuna 13, hoping to gain some information on the true effects of the aforementioned problems. However, we couldn't find anything due to Comuna 13 being such a recent touristic attraction (in the past 5 years it has turned into the #1 most visited place in the city). Comuna 13 has an incredible story of transformation - going from one of the most violent and dangerous places in Colombia to becoming vibrant and resilient. However, with this newfound revolution, there is a large adverse effect of tourism that has only emerged in very recent years. Although it had such a rapid rise in tourism, the data is so new that it hasn't been attempted to be collected yet. We found this crazy, and quickly pivoted, realizing that this lack of information was a call to action, as Comuna 13 needs help, and the first step to doing that is providing real facts on the issues. We plan to share this data with others, to provide a platform for residents of Comuna 13 to express their concerns, and to raise awareness and spark interest about these issues that seem widely unknown to hopefully evoke policy change and much needed regulation in the near future. We hope to also create materials with our journalism student volunteers about being a good tourist that we can share with Zippy Tour to utilize. We also want to put our data into a report that we can publish in local newsletters, hopefully reaching a wide variety of individuals in Medellin.

Day 1 was our immersion day, where we introduced our volunteers to Comuna 13 and its people, as well as conducted an empathy training, focusing on active listening and body language in preparation for our surveying on Day 2. We scheduled a tour with Stiven from Zippy Tour to showcase all of the areas that we would be surveying in Comuna 13. Although a few of the volunteers had been to the touristic area of Comuna 13, we were introducing a broader scope, visiting areas unseen by tourists, hoping to gain a wider picture of the adverse effects of tourism on all areas of the vast community. 

We started the tour, beginning to hike up the steep mountain the community lies on. I realized about five minutes into the trip that I had forgotten to tell my volunteers that the climb would be a big one. People were wearing jeans as we climbed stair after stair, literally scaling the mountain. However, we did it with mostly smiles on our faces, although people let out the complaints once we finally reached the top. 

Our tour wound up running one hour late, which was not good for my extreme OCD. I started freaking out about being off schedule, wondering why we had to take so many pictures and couldn't just keep walking. However, here comes the importance of teammates. Ali pulled me aside after getting the vibes that I was stressed and talked to me about how it was good that the volunteers were expressing interest in the area and having a good time. He wanted them to feel comfortable in the Comuna, and there was no need to rush. I started to let myself enjoy the experience then too, and when we arrived at the cafe an hour late to being the empathy training, I was just grateful to be in a position where I could be one of the few non-residents to ever see that section of Comuna 13. Who cares about the stupid schedule anyway? 

We even still got to do the empathy training after all. I cut down some irrelevant portions and filler activities, and we still accomplished our task. I was extremely grateful for the patience of our bus driver Ivan and all of the volunteers, as our end time got pushed. I was so emotional after Day 1 because I could truly see the culmination of all the planning my group had done. I was so happy to see the excitement of the volunteers for Day 2, and I really enjoyed bonding with them and watching as we all made friends. I would say Day 1 was definitely a success. 

Day 2 was our survey day, where we stayed in Comuna 13 from 10-5, surveying as many residents and workers as we could. My volunteers were incredible on this day, being so brave to walk up to random strangers asking for their participation. As I watched from behind, running waters and snacks all around the Comuna to anyone who needed an extra pick me up, taking pictures and making sure everything went smoothly, I felt so proud of all we had accomplished so far. We ended with over 150 results, calling for celebration. I knew that although the data still might not amount to much, we had done what we had intended on doing, which was reaching a wide spread of people. Before going to the Comuna, we didn't even know if people would be willing to take part in our survey. Later that night we took our volunteers out to a taqueria, celebrating with churros covered in arequipe. 

Week 5 ended on a good note. Although I knew I still had so much to accomplish before our Day 3 event, "Media Day" (where we would share the results of the survey), I was ready for the challenges to come. It was rewarding to see how it all played out after much hard work, and exciting to know that we were so close to producing a great result.