Drawing the Connections: Sun 16th Oct, 2016.

Labelled houses from the community. (D. Arlen. 2016)

The second meeting , the President of the Council, Mr. Victor, met with us for the first time. We brought with us a map that was created for the community so that the members would have a better understanding of the process with a visual representation of the area. Aripo is much larger then we had estimated as the community pointed out that there are several areas that branched off the main road  leading into other areas.  So it is a learning process for everyone. 

Members of the community filling out the map of their
community. (D. Arlen. 2016)

After our explanations of the Participatory Mapping process, we decided that it would be best to give the attendees a visualization of the mapping process by having them populate the map. We started marking public spaces, such as the church and school, and then the participants started to identify each house by occupant (not by the family name by the "home" name of the most well known members of the house) and then it moved to drawing the connections of relationships between the houses (Families generally stayed within close proximity to each other for several generations). 





The energy in the room, from the members of the community,  skyrocketed when they started to identify mapping their neighbours, friends and family. When it became personal, we felt that the members of the council took ownership of the project. The transfer of information also created a transfer of energy. Initially, the participants were more being informed and when they were explaining where each location is and how it relates to others they became the experts in the topic of Aripo and we became the informed. 

It was really an interesting experience and I do hope that as the project continues that we see that the community continues to take more ownership of the project. To become For Aripo By Aripo. 

Members of the community pointing our features on the map. (A. Thorne. 2016)