I can't lie about this, the marmalade search was over on day 1. Or is it just orange jam?!
Surfing: stood up the first time and then every time. It's seriously fun.
I might need some new objectives. Suggestions welcome.
Thursday morning was my first visit to SKIP in El Porvenir, a very deprived suburb of Trujillo. At the moment it's the holiday club while the children are on school holidays. They have classes at SKIP, in English, maths and sports, plus other activities like swimming, cooking, surfing and art. SKIP has 6 departments: Education, Economic Development, Social Work, Psychology, Volunteer Co-ordination and Finance. All of this has been going on around the holiday club. I might go in to more detail later on when I've learned more about it all.
The volunteers all go to work in taxis, the morning expedition leaving at 7.30am. They are just normal sized taxis but there were 8 of us piled in on my first trip, excluding the driver. Everyone thanked him for taking a detour when he saw a police car up ahead. I guess it's not legal then.
As we pulled up to the SKIP office, there were kids waiting outside and the taxi was greeted by squeals and a shouting of "SKIP!" Before you know it, they are opening the car doors and hanging off you as you get out. Even though I was a new volunteer ("es una nueva!"), some of the bolder children threw their arms around my neck to give me a kiss on the cheek. As the morning went on, I wasn't wearing quite as many kids as I might, because they are so excited by cameras and were all keen to stay well within my view (there are some really big posers; a child modelling agency would have a field day here).
In general, volunteers aren't allowed to take cameras to the office, or phones or computers. If you work on a computer, you work at home. If the office gets known for having valuables then break-ins and robberies would almost certainly become a problem. I have special permission as it's for my work, and this also means that I'll be sharing a lot of photos of the children with the other volunteers because opportunities to photograph them are quite rare.
My tiny memory card could not cope with the endless photo opportunities. Whether studying in class, playing games or making fruit salad kebabs, the children provided Kodak gold at every moment. The whole place is a whirlwind of colour, beaming smiles, faded Disney princess t-shirts and the kind of school work and art you'd expect but made using a collage of scraps of paper, cardboard, recycling. Art materials and books are extortionate in Peru and posting them causes problems.
When my camera memory card was full to the brim with no more possible deletions, I got involved in a less violent version of British Bulldog. Still not quite right after the journey (i've been given various possible explanations for extreme water retention, whatever it is, I seem to have expanded by at least 10%) and not yet used to the heat, this was strenuous. Those fruit kebabs were a life saver.
El Porvenir reminds you that we're really in the desert here. It doesn't rain much but the seem to be big on watering because there's lots of greenery in the main city. El Porvenir is sandy, dusty and it feels very hot at the SKIP office. Most of the buildings around are either unfinished or in disrepair. According to the info I have for the Annual Report, 14% of the population in this area live without running water, 18% have no electricity and 58% live in houses with earth floors. 15% of the children under 5 years old are chronically malnourished. I don't have the references yet but I can add a link to the report when it's finished.
SKIP do amazing work with the families - helping them with finance (loans for businesses, housing repairs etc), talking therapies and parenting workshops as well as assisting them to educate their children. It's all about giving them the means to improve their own situation.
So far though, I've mostly seen 100 or so kids having a great time (that's holiday club!) and a very impressive bilingual operation to make that happen.
Surfing: stood up the first time and then every time. It's seriously fun.
I might need some new objectives. Suggestions welcome.
Thursday morning was my first visit to SKIP in El Porvenir, a very deprived suburb of Trujillo. At the moment it's the holiday club while the children are on school holidays. They have classes at SKIP, in English, maths and sports, plus other activities like swimming, cooking, surfing and art. SKIP has 6 departments: Education, Economic Development, Social Work, Psychology, Volunteer Co-ordination and Finance. All of this has been going on around the holiday club. I might go in to more detail later on when I've learned more about it all.
The volunteers all go to work in taxis, the morning expedition leaving at 7.30am. They are just normal sized taxis but there were 8 of us piled in on my first trip, excluding the driver. Everyone thanked him for taking a detour when he saw a police car up ahead. I guess it's not legal then.
As we pulled up to the SKIP office, there were kids waiting outside and the taxi was greeted by squeals and a shouting of "SKIP!" Before you know it, they are opening the car doors and hanging off you as you get out. Even though I was a new volunteer ("es una nueva!"), some of the bolder children threw their arms around my neck to give me a kiss on the cheek. As the morning went on, I wasn't wearing quite as many kids as I might, because they are so excited by cameras and were all keen to stay well within my view (there are some really big posers; a child modelling agency would have a field day here).
In general, volunteers aren't allowed to take cameras to the office, or phones or computers. If you work on a computer, you work at home. If the office gets known for having valuables then break-ins and robberies would almost certainly become a problem. I have special permission as it's for my work, and this also means that I'll be sharing a lot of photos of the children with the other volunteers because opportunities to photograph them are quite rare.
My tiny memory card could not cope with the endless photo opportunities. Whether studying in class, playing games or making fruit salad kebabs, the children provided Kodak gold at every moment. The whole place is a whirlwind of colour, beaming smiles, faded Disney princess t-shirts and the kind of school work and art you'd expect but made using a collage of scraps of paper, cardboard, recycling. Art materials and books are extortionate in Peru and posting them causes problems.
When my camera memory card was full to the brim with no more possible deletions, I got involved in a less violent version of British Bulldog. Still not quite right after the journey (i've been given various possible explanations for extreme water retention, whatever it is, I seem to have expanded by at least 10%) and not yet used to the heat, this was strenuous. Those fruit kebabs were a life saver.
El Porvenir reminds you that we're really in the desert here. It doesn't rain much but the seem to be big on watering because there's lots of greenery in the main city. El Porvenir is sandy, dusty and it feels very hot at the SKIP office. Most of the buildings around are either unfinished or in disrepair. According to the info I have for the Annual Report, 14% of the population in this area live without running water, 18% have no electricity and 58% live in houses with earth floors. 15% of the children under 5 years old are chronically malnourished. I don't have the references yet but I can add a link to the report when it's finished.
SKIP do amazing work with the families - helping them with finance (loans for businesses, housing repairs etc), talking therapies and parenting workshops as well as assisting them to educate their children. It's all about giving them the means to improve their own situation.
So far though, I've mostly seen 100 or so kids having a great time (that's holiday club!) and a very impressive bilingual operation to make that happen.
the photos are fantastic Amy
ReplyDeleteLinda