Ricardo Calderon
,
I was born in a small town in Peru in 1944, and lived there working as a schoolteacher until 1971. The year after, I moved to Miami, Florida where I worked in different jobs including the one as a Spanish teacher for 36 years until I retired.
In 2007, I read in the newspapers about a terrorist attack to the police station in the town where I was born, which got all my attention. The attack was done by drug dealers in revenge for the cocaine the police had taken from them days before. As a result of that, the police station was destroyed and the chief police killed savagely.
From that day on, I followed the news and even wrote a book about it. Afterwards I realized that the young people in that small town of 8,000, called Ocobamba, were vulnerable to the influence of those drug dealers.
I am traveling there every year since 2009 to organize an annual Art Festival for the students in elementary and high schools with contests in painting, singing, dancing, poetry reading, chess and sports (basketball, volleyball and soccer) – rewarding the winners with diplomas, money, books, toys and specially-made notebooks-diaries.
All those events are taped, edited into DVDs, which I distribute among the students and the schools I visit year after year, giving lectures of the advantages of education and dangers of use, distribution and commerce of drugs.
During these visits I see that most of those schools have no auditoriums or audiovisual equipment, so I decided to build one for the town. I am in the middle of it, and in the process of getting funds to finish it. I believe this venue will be a better place for my year-round arts, culture and education activities and fulfill my dream to change the minds of not only the youth, but all the people of Ocobamba and surrounding areas.
Ocobamba is happy to have this kind of activities and so am I.
My advice is to get involved, it doesn’t matter how old you are, your initiative – as little as it may look – will make a difference to improve the world where we live.