My Experience at Huancaro

I remember feeling nervous on my first volunteering day at Huancaro - I thought the kids might be shy or not interact with me because my Spanish wasn´t great. However, I had nothing to be worried about because as the taxi was driving up the big hill up to the school, I saw 4 or 5 kids running right beside us with huge smiles on their faces…and they were so excited to give us hugs and kisses as soon as we got out of the taxi – even me, even though I was new! After that, the day flew by.

The general day goes like this:

We arrive at the school (at 9:00) and the kids wash their hands and faces…

They eat breakfast that we bring for them…

They grab their toothbrush & brush their teeth…

The kids bring the benches back in…

School begins…

Breaktime!

School time again…

School ends (at noon) with the students getting in line and

answering a question to receive a piece of fruit…

...and we walk down the hill to get a taxi, but still have fun along the way!

A couple of my favourite memories so far:

Some kids in the class were having trouble with their ¨right¨and ¨left¨. So, Berta (the Peruvian teacher) tied yellow string on each of the kids´right wrist...after that, when she said ¨right hand!¨ or ¨left hand!¨, the kids knew which hand to put up. I loved it. And so did the kids.

Obviously it is difficult for kids to concentrate for a ong time. So, when Professora Berta feels the kids need a break, she puts on a song (always the same song so the kids know it well!) and we have a dance break – walking around the tables in a circle, jumping up and down, waving our hands in the air, etc. Sometimes the kids get so into it that they end up yelling the words which is tough on the ears, but always puts a smile on our faces.

During play time, the kids have grown fond of me playing tag with them. They love running away from me and (of course) I love being able to run around with them! I also tried to learn how to play marbles with the boys in our class...I sort of understood the game – not quite – and my accuracy with the marbles was definitely not as high as the boys.

The kids, as may be expected, are in love with cameras. As soon as they see one, they want to get in the photo...once they are all grouped up, instead of saying ¨cheese¨ to make themselves smile, they say ¨Whiskeyyyyyyy¨and start waving their hands at the camera.

New Christmas Campaign

Some of our previous volunteers came up with the idea of another campaign to help get some donations for Christmas to the kids. Actually December in Peru it is also the last month of school year. Right before Christmas two month summer holidays start for the kids. We would like to have a graduation party and at the party give little presents for the kids. We have already quite a few from our previous events but still need some. Last weekend we have designed the poster below and got it printed in a very nice format. We kind of became experts in getting great posters printed. Our Sandra is again going to be all over the town :))

The idea of the campaign is to get 40 hotels and restaurants as partners where people will be able to leave their donations. Once in a while we are going to pick up the donations. Since there are nine volunteers at the moment it should not be that big of a job. The first reactions from prospective hotels and restaurants are very encouraging.

We have also managed to agree to have a party at one of the more popular venues in Cusco where some part of the proceeds will go for our cause. Perhaps we will also manage to introduce Beer Pong in the place where we hold our pub quizzes with the proceeds going to us.

About the donations:

We have to say we are VERY PROUD of all the people who have donated money to our kids. Thanks to you we make their lives a little bit less miserable and give them a bit more chances for the future! It is kind of amazing because all in all we have collected almost USD 4800. Just as we have targeted. Honestly we did not really believe it will be possible and here we are - in the beginning of November and we have reached our target!!!!!

It is almost the end of school year and we are preparing the kids for the entry exams to the state schools. It also means that we have to pay a small yearly fee, get uniforms, notebooks and pencils for kids. Since during the break of January and February we will have to recruit new kids for our summer school - condensed program helping kids who would probably not make it to the 1st grade without our 2 months preparatory summer school - we are also going to have new expenses.

But with all our new events in the pipeline, new volunteers and their networks we hope to raise still more money therefore we have increased our target on our fundraising page!!!