Monday and Tuesday we went to the local school and handed out fliers and jumping origami frogs to the parents and kids. My Belgian friends showed me how to make a new and improved jumping frog to the ones I make from post-its.
Wednesday afternoon was our first day of the program. We start at 2pm since the schools get out at 1pm. Our planned schedule is to have homework time from 2-3pm, activities at stations to learn and foster creativity (with different mediums like clay, drawing, acting things out, etc) from 3pm-4pm, sports and games in the park up the hill from 4pm-5pm, a nutritious dinner from 5pm-6pm, then we all go home. This week since we are just getting started, we have been doing homework, a snack, puzzles and games, sports, then going home. Homework is a challenge as many times we don’t understand what the homework is asking to begin with (we are all at different levels of learning Spanish), and then often they are doing things like Peruvian geography which we aren’t familiar with. I need to find an Atlas somewhere in town.
Our first day we had 21 kids come. Most of them left early because they were giving out free shoes in San Sebastian, so they definitely needed to take advantage of that. It rained that day, so we couldn’t take half of them to the park to play like we’d planned, which meant we had stir crazy kids making a LOT of noise in one tiny room. All of the volunteers were a little relieved that a bunch of kids left to go get shoes as we were a bit overwhelmed the first day, but overall it went very well and we were happy with the supplies we had and that all the kids seemed to enjoy it.
Yesterday was our second day and we had 43 kids. It was a bit crazy, but since it didn’t rain we were able to go to the park and they loved it! We played some crazy running around games and when we participated they were so excited. There’s one game where everyone sits in a circle. One person walks around the circle and stops between two people. Those two have to get up and run in opposite directions around the circle, and try to get back first to grab the flag. They think it’s hilarious when we are competing with them, so they chose me and a kid a few times. They call us “profe” short for profesora or professor, so when we play, they scream “Profe! Profe!” It’s pretty funny. I have to remember to wear clothes I can be fast in :D. Also, these kids are tough. There were a couple of times when they ran into each other or just lost control and fell on the concrete, but instead of crying like you’d expect they jump right back up laughing.
They have been loving the bananas and apples we’ve been giving them this week. Our goal is to provide nutritious meals every day because according to the research done for this program due to malnutrition, it’s very likely with a lot of these kids that their brains will not fully develop. Next week I get to cook for 28 kids, so if you have any ideas for nutritious meals that you can cook in a pot, please send them my way. So far all I have in mind is spaghetti with a veggie on the side for one day. They intend for us to cook chicken once a week and fish once a week. Other than that, suggestions? Please?
You can see in some of the parents that are coming up to the door the intense need they have for this program. Moms that are working on the street selling random goods all day, that can’t give their kids the attention they need and can’t help with their homework because they can’t read themselves. This is going to be an awesome program. I just wish we were able to take as many kids as want to come, but we are limited for space, limited on volunteers, and limited in funds to support the program. We have to select 28 kids to stay in the program this weekend and I’m sure we’ll have more than 43 today as we had moms coming and asking yesterday if their kids can come. The selection process is going to be horrible and telling the parents and kids that we can’t take them is going to be worse. Please pray that we’ll have wisdom in selecting the kids that need this the most and can benefit from it the most.
Margo (New York/Holland) and Stejn (Belgium) when we took the kids to the park yesterday.
The kiddos playing that game I described earlier.
Typing back on our little cloth bandanas that help us keep track of who needs to come back to the school with us. Other neighborhood kids come over and want to play too while we're out.
The view from the park is not to shabby :)
Ohhhh before I forget... thank you so much to the people from work and family and friends who gave me money to spend on volunteer work down here... so far we've contributed to this program by buying paints, playdoh, two large plastic tubs for carrying toys to the park, facepaint and brushes, and velcro to use on the puppets for the puppet theater. All that costed 106.80 soles, which is about $39.55, so we still have over $450 to donate when needs come up. Believe me, these kids really appreciate everything that is given to them here. I've never seen kids so happy to play with puzzles and silly games. Thank you so much for your help!!
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