schoolS IN QUITO

This project has been started by pastor Fabian. The goal of the project is to give the children from the district Quintan a place where they feel save. The children usually don’t have a good home situation. Their parents are addicted to drugs or alcohol, divorced or they work in the prostitution. There are a lot of single mothers in this district, because most of the fathers have left them. Because the mothers have to earn money, the children are usually alone the whole day, and have to take care of themselves. Most of the mothers are getting such a low wage that the children eat very less or sometimes not at all. So giving the children a healthy and nutritious meal is an important part of the project. Even though it’s a Christian project, the pastor said that it’s not a problem if a volunteer is not Christian. However, if the children ask if you are religious it’s better to say that you are, because you will notice that the children are really into their faith.

At this moment, the project is only open on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays because they get too little help and equipment for the other days of the week.

Average day planning.
Around 9.00/9.30 pm, the first children walk in. They don’t have a volunteer yet, who can be a mentor for the kids in the morning, so the children have to entertain themselves. At 12.00 they get their lunch. After lunch, the children go to school and the next group comes out of school. This group contains about 50 children. After lunch, the children brush their teeth and the homework guidance begins around 2.30 pm.

There are 3 volunteers working in the kitchen. They prepare a huge amounts of tasty and healthy food for the children. Besides that, Rosa is working in the office as a secretary. When people are having small health complaints they can also go to her. Rosa keeps a file for every child, which contains medical data, the situation at home and the school reports. This way, they can provide better help to the children that really need it. For homework guidance there are 5 mentors.

As a volunteer you can choose to work only in the morning, the whole day or only in the afternoon.

What can you do as a volunteer?
- Homework guidance
- Organize activities
- Carry out activities
- Rosa needs help with keeping up the files of the children
- Help in the kitchen for lunch
- Teaching, for instance computer lessons, English, handcraft, sports, drawing etc
- For the volunteers who can speak Spanish well, you can help at the ´consulting hour´ for the children who want to talk about their problems. The volunteer would have to stay for a longer period of time.
- In September, they want children with the age of 4/5 to get education in the building. For this, a volunteer who is educated to be a teacher is needed.

Basic information:
Minimum:                    1 month
Spanish:                     Reasonable - good
Working hours:           From 9 till 4
Traveling time:            About 30 minutes