DESARROLLO SOCIAL & HABITAT (DS&H)

CUENTAMELO TODO IBARRA (CTI): On your marks, Get set…

2011-10-02T09:12:00.011-05:00

…Go : Monday 3 October, 1pm, on the volley-ball field in the Parque Central de Alpachaca, Ibarra!

Meet CTI’s operating & consulting team:
- Cinthya: our teacher, lives in Alpachaca & comes from a family of teachers, has mostly experience with smaller children and has led for a couple of years a local street initiative with kids in Alpachaca.
- Fernando: our social worker, who also works for the local authorities, lives in Alpachaca and has many years experience in street & summer projects with youth at risk in & out of Alpachaca. - Cefa students from Fe y Alegria’s local educational centre: all recently graduated & currently between studies, most of them are committed to supporting CTI and live in & around Alpachaca.
- CTI Board: composed of 5 Fe y Alegria professionals (college teachers & social workers) who will feed into the street session strategic planning (college curricular, gaps & needs) and also bring support and advice on the social needs observed by the operating team.

What will CTI be about?
- An adaptation of Cuentamelo Todo Quito (cf. below for an update!), CTI will provide a recreational space for kids & adolescents to learn about & live out their rights- starting with being children and the right to play and learn, but also learn by & through playing.
- Alpachaca is known to be a disaffected suburb of Ibarra, situated 6mns away from Fe y Alegria’s educational centre, with high levels of poverty and unemployment. Approximately 60% of Fe y Alegria’s school and college students (the centre provides for both, one in the morning the other in the afternoon) live in Alpachaca but there is little relationship with the local community which is pretty much left to its own devices, with a youth at risk of exposure to high levels of deviancy (alcohol, drug use & vending, violence & delinquency).
- A session planning is currently being drawn up by the operating team laying out what the initial themes will be, starting with the overarching theme of “The Right to a Dignified Life” valuing one’s life, looking after one's body, knowing the dangers of the street….all this to be more confident, realize one's life options and re-appropriate one’s living space…starting with your streets!

When will CTI be taking up the streets?
- Thanks to the local municipal authorities, DS&H and Fe y Alegria have been granted an authorisation to be, in the afternoons, in Alpachaca’s Parque Central: Mondays (starting 3.10.11!), Wednesdays and Fridays for a total of 14 hours.

What are CTI’s materials so far?
- 199 books: carefully selected stock chosen for CTI Mobile Library thanks to our supporting partner Better World Books LEAP grant.
- The tent, mats, Mobile Library wagon & initial didactic materials will be all be delivered on D-day.
- The Mobile School (2nd school donated by our Mobile School partner- this time for our CTI project!) has been slowed down in Ecuadorian customs last week but finally released (!) and should be in Ibarra for our Wednesday session!
- Thanks to Julio Cesar, the Head of the Alpachaca area, these will all be safely stored in the Communal House just opposite the Park.

As it all unfolds we will be keeping you posted with photos next week! We will also be welcoming the visit of Tona and Gonzo, 2 Mobile School Latin American representatives, who are here for 3 weeks to train our Ibarra team and “refresh” for a few days the Quito members!! ;0

And CUENTAMELO TODO QUITO (CTQ)? Stronger, higher…further

Over the summer, the kids elected their set of games and activities and Rosario along with the team set out to design the street planning accordingly…they did have to opt out of a few however such as “sleeping” (the Plaza San Francisco not being the ideal setting for such [non]activity) and “eating” (that would possibly turn our street session into complete havoc!). So the activities ranged from sports activities, arts & crafts but also visits to local museums such as a 2nd visit to the Presidential Palace, the Wax museum and also the City museum. Within each of these activities, the CEFA team leads, joins and supports all activities.

Since September, things have sped up as schools opened up and families have been rushing around town sourcing uniforms, books and all necessary materials that allow one to attend classes. The streets in the centre are back to human & car traffic and congestions at the various schooling hours…As you now know, the schooling system is divvied up in 3: morning, afternoon and evening school. And as most state/public school require uniforms here, Quito’s old hilly town ripples with streaming colours from 6.30am…All this preparation has meant that our attendance in Cuentamelo Todo Quito has slowed down, as children are sent home with heavy homework and parents are trying to organize their new timetables.

Since end of August, we have been preparing going back to school and what that entails, at the personal level but also in relation to one’s family and the wider social circle of friends, teachers, and its consequent general sense of belonging. Having shared the excitements and anxieties of the participants we now know well, this month will be interesting in observing how they are integrating back into the schooling system, where their difficulties may lie and how Cuentamelo Todo Quito can support them in better achieving. For example, last week, a participant came to us and informed us he had received a bad grade, we agreed that he would bring his work the next day to go over it together and see how he could do better next time.

CTQ brief update
- Since August, CTQ operates 4 times a week from la Plaza San Francisco.
- Thanks to our supporting partner Better World Book’s LEAP grant, DS&H has purchased 202 books to enhance its Mobile Library, built a much sturdier wagon to transport our now rather lush stock! And the Team has also benefited from 2 trainings by Yolanda, a Pedagogic Advisor to the Libresa Editorials, on reading techniques to discover new ways to "tell" the book.
- After 2 years of great collaboration, Santi, our Cefa member and session coordinator, has left the team to find a full-time job to sponsor his studies- we have just found out he has found that job & we wish the best of luck..
- Maritza, another Cefa leader who has been with us for over a year, has followed up closely and is now coordinating the sessions supporting Rosario along with the rest of the Cefa group, namely Cynthia, Romel, Jessica, Johanna and Angel.
- Magaly & Angelica, 2 final year students from the University Politecnica Salesiana (UPS), are collaborating with us since early September for 6 months. During that time, and beyond accompanying in the street sessions, they will be developing side-research and offering personal psychological follow-up to some of our participants.
- Fanny, Karina, Alex & Veronica, the first wave of our Pedagogy students from the UPS will be with us for a period of 2 months, starting Monday 3 bringing their technical expertise and skills to support Rosario.
- Monica, our social worker, is currently in talks with our health partner, the UMSC (with whom we are carrying out a new set of medical checks for our participants), to coordinate how 2 medical students from the Universidad Catolica can take part in CTQ, animating specific sessions and carrying out an individual follow-up on the treatments prescribed in those checks.

We look forward to an exciting beginning of school year with a strong dedicated team, starting with Tona & Gonzo, our Mobile School partner representatives, who arrived last night and will be with us in Quito for a few days for that long-awaited “refresher” (the last one was with their first donation, in March 2010)!

Snaps to follow…so stay tuned...

As the sunny summer unfolds...

2011-07-23T21:23:00.021-05:00

... Cuéntamelo Todo Quito (CTQ) will be focusing primarily on fun and games. After consulting with our participating kids over their preferred activities last week, the team met up this week to start drawing up this summer’s activities. Top of the list: football & basketball, painting and visits to local museums. As the holidays kick in and the numbers will be inflating, Cuéntamelo Todo Quito will continue to offer a space for kids to come relax, play and learn.

CTQ Update
Numbers, logs & content
• Since June 2009, Cuéntamelo Todo Quito has hosted 233 sessions welcoming over 7000 participants.
• Over 400 books have been lent and 450 short Ecuadorian tales distributed.
• A new wave of health checks is being coordinated with our partner, la Unidad Medica de Salud Centro (UMSC).
• Monica, our Social Worker, is currently renewing contacts with all our local partner social services to define new areas of collaboration for September 2011.
• From August onwards, CTQ will be present an extra day on the Plaza San Francisco bringing our presence up to 4 days weekly, namely: Monday (2.30-5pm), Tuesday (10am-1pm), Wednesday (2.30-5pm), and Thursday (10am-1pm).
• Since February, we have focused on themes and values that we have noted needed further developing with our children, namely health & hygiene (especially through values such as respect of the self and others), as well as key concepts like citizenship and cultural identity. One of the activities linked to this was a visit to the Preseidential Palace, which lies two blocks away from the Plaza San Francisco.

Team
• Since February 2011, Rosario has joined our team and is leading our street sessions: she is trained psychologist and is also specialised in Education with Children and Youth at risk. She has worked in a number of Ecuadorian NGOs tackling issues linked to children at risk, such as Aldeas Infantiles SOS Ecuador, Tierra Nueva, Chicos de la Calle.
• Our CEFA group is currently led by Santiago who has been with us since the beginning of the project; he graduated from FyA last September and has since been working part-time for DS&H whilst studying at University.
• The CEFA group is composed of a dynamic bunch of youngsters (Cintia, Johis, Johanna, Romel, Darwin, Martin, Maritza, Andres, Geovanna & Jessica) who at the moment are on holidays and have offered to share the maximum of their free time with the kids.
• Since May 2011, CTQ has been welcoming 2nd year students in Pedagogy from the Universidad Politécnica Salesiana (UPS), with whom DS&H has signed an institutional partnership. As part of their University training, 6 students participated weekly in our sessions and supported Rosario and the CEFA group in delivering adapted activities.
• Over the month of July, we received the visit of Florence & Edouard, 2 volunteers from St Louis de Gonzagues college in Paris, it was a delight to have them especially as they blended so naturally with the team and project...We will miss them!
• The CTQ team has benefited since the beginning of the year from the following trainings:
* Creative and Musical workshops led by Bernarda, head of Fe y Alegria’s Choir, who led a few of our street sessions on “The right to be creative”;
* Workshops on sexuality and how to “manage” that topic with children from the street, led by our partner, the UMSC’s social workers, who also participated in a number of our street sessions on the following issues: nutrition, health, hygiene, etc.

DS&H News in Brief
• We are currently working with our partner, Fe y Alegría, on the launch of Cuéntamelo Todo in Ibarra (soon to be known as Cuéntamelo Todo Ibarra – CTI), north of the country, scheduled early October 2011 (more details to come on our website).
• For this project, our current partner Mobile School has donated us a new school; this will be twinned with a training of the Ibarra team (and a refresher for the CTQ team) in October.
• We are also currently enhancing our current Mobile Library/Bank in Quito and working at setting up one for Ibarra, a number of trainings for the Quito and Ibarra teams on reading techniques with a local Ecuadorian author and publishing company are also being scheduled for August & October.
• Despite still energetically looking for more funds, we have recently received funding from the Air France Foundation (2nd consecutive year), Better World Books through their LEAP program and the Belgian Technical Cooperation (BTC)
• If you want to support us, please click here to find out how...;0

2011: Cuéntamelo Todo sigue en marcha...

2011-02-17T09:24:00.028-05:00

Cuéntamelo Todo taking up the streets...

Since January, our 2 Fe y Alegría graduates, Santi & Henry have been leading on the execution of our sessions with the support of their ex-schoolmates…to be true, this has actually been happening since November when we “soft-launched” our new street session plan.
Since then and through a series of activities & dynamics using our main didactic materials (that is the Mobile School & mobile library), we have been focusing with our kids on a single value for a month, with an underlying right running for a week and breaking down 3 related themes in our weekly sessions. The reason behind this was that as we have grown organically, passing from 1 day in the street to 3, it simply made sense to link up our rights-based approach day to the rest so as to make our approach more consistent and leverage the space we had with the kids to reinforce these, by “living them out” in each session!
Hence, since November we have been revisiting key values such as identity, equality, solidarity, responsibility, honesty, with for example the right to solidarity, looking at how leadership and engagement can ensure that we care for ourselves, the ones we love and our environment. Activities have varied greatly as you will see in the pics and have included for example reviving paper muppets that the kids had created in a December session under the value of equality, and the right to be different, with the theme being specifically, the right to be different in our tastes. The CEFA team, after selecting specific characters with the kids, carried out a play on a child who had not done his homework. The theme here was, with rights come responsibilities, and notably, the responsibility we have to ourselves to ensure we give ourselves the tools to succeed & fulfil our rights.
Overarching and running through all our activities, are elements of trust, respect and team spirit that we seek to reinforce with the kids, where games and relaxation are also central to a child's rights: for one to be well & complete as a person and have the ability to succeed in his/her undertakings, one needs to be rested, have fun but most importantly one requires the space to Be a child. We have also been carrying out numerous games enhancing trust through covering eyes and as a group or in pairs, allowing yourself, and the other, to guide you. So in the value of honesty, we explored the right to solidarity and the importance of leadership through literally "leading" the other...the other being someone you may never have seen in your life, or actually someone you know and perhaps don't particularly trust…;0

The attendance since the New Year has been pretty sporadic and eclectic. The weather has also been playing up a couple of its wintery tricks but we have managed to stay put. This however does not exclude the fact that many our kids parents are ambulant street sellers or their vending posts are located in the streets, so when the skies get threatening, they don’t hesitate to head home and sweep their kids along.

With the new schooling year, many have had more homework and exams and Cuéntamelo Todo has become a condition for many: “if the homework (and grades for that matter) are properly carried out, then they are allowed to join”! There have actually been a few recent instances where negotiations with parents have occurred to ensure that the kids can come to learn & relax with us through play to be more prepared for study!!

Honestidad, Derecho a Ser Solidario, “Compromiso - liderazgo para ayudar a mejorar una realidad”

CUENTAMELO TODO IN BRIEF

Number Crunching
143 Cuéntamelo Todo street sessions have been carried out since June 2009
5107 participants have visited our sessions, breaking down to 2091 children
3380 didactic boards have been posted on the Mobile School since March 2010 ranging from maths to reading, motricity and creativity games
348 books have been lent to our kids since the mobile library launch in October 2009
65 books have been lost or damaged since then …
Over 1850 small cuentitos (tales) and books have been donated to DS&H since June 2009

January Update
-The Cuéntamelo Todo team has carried out 3 creativity workshops with Bernarda, a classicallly-trained singer, who also set up Fe y Alegría’s childrens' choirs and led a few street sessions with our kids last year on the same theme en canto!

- 2 book donations were made this month, one from a wonderful man in a local Antiques book shop and the other from our neighbours!
- We completed our annual report for the Mobile School, soon to be celebrating our 1st anniversary as we were donated the school in March 2010! The report enabled us to carry out a general team evaluation meeting and also interview some of our kids on their perceptions of Cuéntamelo Todo … all very interesting & worthy insights!

Honestidad, Ser integro, “Estar en acuerdo con lo que uno piensa, y su entorno” : escucha de sonidos

February Update
- Since the beginning of the week, Rosario has joined the Cuéntamelo Todo team, beyond leading our street sessions and team, she will be planning these. She is a professional teacher with many years of experience with children at risk and also has a background in psychology!
- A series of weekly workshops for parents have been organized with the support of the UMSC, one of our key medical partners (with which we have carried out the medical & dental checks), these will cover themes suggested by the parents themselves, such as: nutrition, sexual diseases, legal advice, and intra-familiar violence.
- A 2-year contract has been resigned with the UMSC, and dental & medical checks will be reinitiated in the coming weeks with those who require follow-up as well as with our newcomers.
- With our partner Fe y Alegría, we are initiating background research and drawing up a baseline for the replication of Cuéntamelo Todo in Ibarra in the coming months- all very exciting!

Respeto, Derecho a opinar, “Escuchar, preguntar e investigar para hacerse una opinión”:

elaboración de un collage de lo que nos llamo la atención en el periódico

Felices fiestas

2010-12-23T12:49:00.011-05:00

¡El Equipo de DS&H les desea un hermoso feriado y un próspero año nuevo!

Nos sacamos el sombrero frente a todos los que luchan para un mundo mejor. Esperamos con mucho ánimo conectarnos en el 2011 por Cuéntamelo Todo siempre con más gente dedicada, creativa y colaboradora como son nuestros socios actuales.

¡Les esperamos sobre nuestro blog en el nuevo año para contarles más sobre nuestros planes y actividades en el 2011 con nuestros niños y más allá todavia!

The DS&H Team wishes you a wonderful festive season and a very prosperous New Year!

We raise our hats to all those working towards a better and more just society and look forward over 2011 to connecting through Cuéntamelo Todo with more dedicated, creative and collaborative people, like our current partners.

We hope to meet you back here on our blog in the New Year where we will be telling you more about our new exciting 2011 plans and activities with our kids and beyond!

Creative therapy...

2010-10-30T18:33:00.003-05:00

Over the past month or so, we have been busy on various fronts…greeting our kids back, identifying “the new & the old” and their needs, observing how- and that can be pretty breathtaking- some have grown into young ladies, little tough boys or simply, incredibly hugging and affectionate characters. Most importantly, we have been working on keeping Cuentamelo Todo’s space “open” for the kids to elect what it is they feel like doing and get a better idea of what it is we should be developing with them over the next couple of months.

During this “observation” period, it has been great to see how many of them, through the various games we have at hand, are now pals and meet up on the Plaza specifically to pick up where they last left these…On the menu at Cuentamelo Todo: the usual footy, the long & short sogas (surprisingly kids never seem to lose interest!!), the very popular elastico (seems to transcend all age groups and sexes!), the rayuela, etc. On the Mobile School, the Juego de la Oca, orientation games and Quien Es are all popular team games that some kids get incredibly shirty about if they are not posted for a while… Others, well they just storm under the tent and request their piece of paper, crayons, a book to be read, and the issue is over.

A recent innovation on the Mobile School has been a growing interest in using it as a drawing board which is incredibly more ecological than paper…Whilst some are coming up with very artistic drawings such as “Looking after the world”, coined by a little girl after she had drawn the mapa mundi and a big hand holding it; others are using it to pass on messages- as with the fish figure that emerged from one the laminated games- a group of siblings took to describing what the fish may be saying: as you hopefully might be able to see, a pretty thought for the day! Meanwhile, we also discovered we had an artist amongst our team; as soon as our back is turned, Santi is busy beavering away at drawing graffiti, which created quite a stir yesterday amongst some of the kids who also wanted to write their names stylishly but couldn’t quite figure out the letters- obviously an activity to be added to our planning sessions! ;0

On a slightly more serious front, we have also been working with the kids at developing team spirit through manual activities and have put a fair amount of emphasis, in this new schooling year, on the importance of recognizing and addressing the other with respect. Thanks to our wonderful trio, Yvonne, Santi & Henry, we have been developing communication and motricity skills through a series of games where the kids had to call on each other, follow each other around and then identify themselves by their names… A challenging exercise as most call each other, as well as the team, by the very popular “oye” … which could translate as “hey you” (over there)…;0

This month, we also welcomed Leonor Bravo, despite the rainy day, a local writer who came to tell the story “La Granja de las Hormigas”, which counted the story of 2 cousins from distinct areas of Ecuador and the various knowledge of their country they respectively had. Beyond values of tolerance and sharing, the tale spoke of insects & animals as well as respect for nature, which we then brought to the artistic field by recreating aspects of the cuento through group drawings of images of animals & insects.

A wonderful purchase we recently made was a record player which has come in very handy in a few sessions where music was at the heart of our activities. Over the past few weeks, Yvonne, a fervent believer in musical therapy, has exposed the kids, through movement and play, to some great melodies such as La Sinfonia Inconclusa del Mar by Piero, or Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. Bernarda, from the Coro de Fe y Alegria, also made it for a visit despite her terrible cold and injured knee and thanks to our new technological aquisition, the kids learned to identify what instruments made which sounds…Through these various musical activities, we are discovering the kids love to play & listen to music as well as respond increasingly well with their bodies!

Last week we also had the incongruous visit of local firemen who had been given authorization by the local authorities to set up tent at close vicinity on the Plaza … It made complete sense to = join forces and our kids were the first to sit down in the middle of the Plaza and call for a rather busy audience! As you can see, a large group concentrated to watch and laugh with the firemen dressed up as all sorts as they sensitized children and their families on how to take care with fire and, most importantly, on how to prevent it.

Brief monthly update:
1."The Mobile School injury": we discovered one day with the kids it lost one of its metal boards, which caused great distress amongst them as that meant we would not be able to take it out …we thankfully managed to repair it swiftly!
2."The tormenting rainy season": despite having access to the Convent, the dark clouds are back & looming over us most afternoons now which means our usual crowd may be less present as their parents cannot sell off the streets…
3. "Cuentamelo Todo’s session planning in progress": with Henry and Santi, and the support of our teacher specialists, we will shortly be unraveling this planning for the next couple of months, where we will be challenging our kids with some more key life values and expecting them to challenge us back!
4. "Reaching out for teachers and partners": we are proceeding with our teacher search for the project and working on developing new partnerships to welcome all types of specialists over our sessions, growing & strengthening our network!
5. “Cuentamelo Todo in numbers”: Cuentamelo Todo has come into contact with over 4259 participants since we started in June 2009, which breaks down to just over 1735 different kids, with an average attendance per session of 32 for a total 136 sessions. Since October 2009, more than 310 books have also been loaned...

... el año lectivo regresó ....

2010-09-27T21:11:00.010-05:00

Ya se acabaron las vacaciones y empezó el nuevo año lectivo! Y como ustedes bien lo saben algunos de los que nos acompañan durante las vacaciones son de otras zonas de la ciudad o del país, otros ya dejaron sus trabajos temporales que les hacían cruzarse por la plaza varias veces al día y compartir momentos robados con nosotros. La verdad es que durante las vacaciones no hay espacio ni para una mosca sobre los paneles de la Escuela móvil, aunque las primeras semanas de reinicios de clases siempre son mucho más tranquilas. Siempre tenemos unos días o unas semanas de transición para que nuestros antiguos compañeros regresen poco a poco, por lo general el tiempo de reorganizarse con los deberes.

Entonces para una transición agridulce, decidimos abordar nuevamente el derecho a la educación pero esta vez bajo la modalidad de una función de teatro, para seguir la siguiente semana con unos ¨origamistas¨ comprometidos a abordar el derecho a regalar, y finalmente la UMSC regresó para una pequeña recapitulación de algunos derechos visto durante el año anterior.

La función de teatro propuesta por los cefistas, encabezados por Henry y Santi, fue bien simpática. Mezcla de interpretaciones de niños temiendo el regreso a clases con compañeros entusiastas tratando de convencerles de lo lindo de poder estudiar y prometerles solidaridad a lo largo del año. La propuesta, para la semana que siguió, de construir figuras chéveres para luego regalarlas marco el orgullo de muchos pero se quedó en la mitad. La verdad es que gracias a Pluma y su compadre, cada uno hizo mas de 10 figuras con solo papel y el simple uso de sus dedos (o la verdad en el caso de los mas chiquitos con dedos prestados de nuestros queridos cefistas…) Empezando con una cajita para asegurarse de tener un lugar para guardar todas estas maravillas por ser creadas…surgieron animales divertidos, personajes curiosos, y para los más serios aviones y barcos. Sin embargo el momento que hubiéramos pensado ser el de regalar estas realizaciones, los niños se pararon en grupos, armando historias con los animalitos de papel, competiendo con sus aviones lanzándoles desde une línea imaginaria, ó también soplando sobre sus barcos para empujarlos en el balde que se usa para limpiar la escuela móvil. En resumen un momento bien alhaja pero que de ninguna manera cumplió con lo propuesto para el dia (-;

Finalmente la UMSC nos vino a acolitar en este inicio de año, y como de costumbre habían llevado a sus dos muñequitos estrellas que suelen traer para conversar con nuestros muchachos de sus derechos. En un comité bastante restringido, se hizo una suerte de retroalimentación informaldel derecho a la identidad, a la familia o a la salud,añadiendo también el derecho a ser protegido, y terminando con el derecho a recibir cariño con los muñecos que invitaban a los guaguas a darles un abrazo! También durante estas semanas los ¨cuentamelotodistas¨ aprovecharon como siempre para hacer sus juegos preferidos en la escuela móvil y probar nuevas láminas de matemática, motricidad, lectura, entre otras.

Confirmado, el año lectivo empezó bien por el lado de la plaza San Francisco!

Desde la Plaza in brief...

2010-08-14T14:53:00.024-05:00

After a couple of weeks of silence, we are back with a brief little taster of what we have been up to on the Plaza:

Mid-July, the Radio Publica del Ecuador came to record one of our sessions- the kids loved it, between the cables, mics, and interviewers…all was exciting novelty and a couple even got to speak up & out, including some mothers! That day, Bernarda from FyA’ s Choir was back to accompany the kids in expressing their creativity through their voice and bodies…creating an interesting array of sounds for the recording. For more on that, check out the show.

For a couple of sessions, we have played a series of games as the weather was pretty clear and sunny and the kids happy to let loose…especially as it is the summer holidays here, no one really wants to sit down and be too serious. We have also had a couple of surprise visits from potential future partners, such as Yvonne, a marvelous school teacher, who during her holiday break has taken to our kids, after passing by randomly a few months ago, and has been returning consistently. So, amongst the fun & games, we have been inviting the kids to come and relax under the tent to listen, or read with her, a story. We also had Pluma’s visit, an Origami artist from the Colectivo Caracolito de Papel Violeta, who came to “check out” our project to see how we could collaborate further...we were successful in baiting him in, so hopefully mid September you will see him return with his crew to lead one of our sessions, on how to make many figures from one same A4 sheet of paper...

The week running up to early August was preparing the celebratiions for Quito´s 200th anniversary of independence, this meant festivities were high, and the Plaza being one of the largest in the old town, was taken up for pretty much an entire week with stages, ramps, and chairs, making it impossible for us to set up. Despite some of the show shiners advising us where to position ourselves, we decided against it as the kids at the moment love ball games, running around, and it was potentially hazardous for all…

Learning about something can also be fun and take place in multiple ways as the crew from the YAKU museum, revealed to us. As it happens, part of their revised strategy is to reach out to new audiences and take their learning out of the museum walls…our contact-making was thus timely! ;0 So Fernanda, Paulina and Bernarda came to check out what it was the kids really knew about water (¨yaku¨ means “water” in quichua), where it can be found, what it evokes, what it does to us, etc. After a series of warm-up games that got the imaginations running, the kids were invited to represent “yaku” with plastilina & cardboard; as you will notice, some really harmonious things came out. After that, the girls turned into muppets, and later clowns, tackling water as key to our body’s health mechanism, and how it is important to look after it. So, “the secret is, if you are not sure of the water: make sure you boil it” the muppets informed the kids, explaining what that meant of course. In the clown session, the kids got really involved as he was trying to steal the bad water and hand it out to them…all were shouting out “don’t drink, don’t drink”, even the little ones, were seeking refuge from the dirty water! The audience was also made aware that drinking the water from the fountain on the Plaza was not a good idea…something we invited the Yaku crew to stress, as we find many hanging around there, supposedly playing! ;0 After all that fun and reflection, Bernarda, Fernanda and Paulina had lugged from the museum a huge tin container in which we had placed soapy water so with metal loops we were able to make some very large bubbles…clearly, even the tough ones, were caught up in being children…a really thrilling sight. There is a strong possibility the Yaku team will be back to visit us in the new school term as we pretty much had a ball!

This week, Henry and Santi, our leading coordinators who by the way have graduated with flying colours and starting university in September remaining involved with us, led a session. They looked at the right to recreation, without labeling it that way. The kids were divvied up in groups and accompanied by one of our Cefistas, they set off to browse the Plaza and select a couple of people to later mime out their activities to the rest of the kids. Once the groups had convened, deliberated on whom they would be representing and how, they launched into peforming. The audience was then invited, in silence (challenging!), to write down their answers. Henri & Santi then went around electing the winning group- as it turned out, all were pretty succesful! The Cefistas then performed a scene where a group a young people met an old man with 3 different outcomes. When asked which the children preferred, they chorused they loved all three so then Yvonne (who was back!) kicked in to reflect with them what each scene was about, and which perhaps, was most appropriate… that of the old man getting mugged was perhaps not ideal! ;0

This month, we also sat down with the team to reflect on a couple of the Mobile School´s boards and what sort of dynamics we could do with & around them. This was an interesting snapshot into the unrevealed creativity of some and showed that it was perhaps a useful exercise to carry out regularly as many of the creativity boards are pretty challenging to animate…and one cannot really do the same activity with 1 kid as with with 10! A new meeting is thus scheduled for mid September. ..

This week we have also wished a relaxing happy end of holidays to our kids as we will be closed for 2 weeks until early September when they will be starting with school again…Should you want, during that time, to find out more about us, check out our new (& very humble!;0) website: http://www.dsh.org.ec/ All comments/suggestions are more than welcome!

Sailing through the summer holidays...

2010-07-11T11:08:00.010-05:00

Over the last 2 weeks, we have been doing a fair bit of artistic and manual stuff. Miguel our local artista and Gaby & Lore from the Defensoria del Pueblo came to respectively carry out activities that would make us reflect a little on our creativity and where it sits, and how we can safeguard our rights by looking after and listening to one another.
As you can see, we hunted down the town for over 30 boxes that we undid and repackaged for the kids to have a spotless surface to express their artistic selves in 3D…some colourful hands, trousers and faces also emerged out of this rather demanding exercise. The challenge there was also working along the other, avoiding spilling paint pots or greedy fingertips on the neighbour along with obtaining ¨la palabra mágica¨ (which is also an eternal battle with some!;0), namely ¨gracias¨ through the reaching & snatching hands... At the end of Miguel´s activity, when most had gone to play on the plaza with the school or the pelota, a few organized souls took to ingeniously organizing the art in the shape of the Mobile School…or a little a smaller, longer, and lighter version of it!
With Gaby and Lore, we weren´t so lucky with the weather but managed to anticipate the aguacero! We took the Mobile School out without the tent, as that means we generally get stranded beneath it with a gang of freezing children calling for a nasty cold …It is actually meant to be the summer season here with holidays that have kicked in but it is actually pretty grey, cold and wet most afternoons now which does not make it very easy to work from the street. ..
So once the girls arrived, we shot up to the Convent where we had been given the go-ahead to seek shelter and divvied up in 3 groups to draw in silence parts of a person. That was the only information given to us. As you will see, out came a rather long-legged and bodied boy, with a skirt, and rather imaginative shoes. The exercise was interesting to observe, each kid added something of his or her own and out of a joint effort was born Santiago. From the descriptions and little details observed, the role models and aspirations were also very telling.
Over the last couple of weeks we have taken to recycling the papers to the stickers on which each kid has his or her name written…with these, Monica our social worker has been coming up with origami activities from little ships to frogs …so along with the origami boards that the Mobile School has to offer, we invited the kids to take up our recycled papers to be creative…once a couple of figures were created, a frog race was on!
This week, we will be a little short on the team side as most of Cefistas have passed their exams with flying colours so will be attending their graduation ceremonies. We will have to cope as this is for a good cause, but the streets are currently pretty full of kids on holidays, looking for activities, with or without their parents, as well as within and without working hours…
As part of their series ¨El Patio de Fe y Alegría¨, our main partner in Cuéntamelo Todo, la Radio Publica del Ecuador (100.9 FM) will be coming this week to cover one of our sessions in vivo…We´ll let you know when it goes on air! ;=0

...CT en numbers...

2010-06-26T19:05:00.003-05:00

This week, we are again changing a little the format to unravel the project this time in numbers & capture it from a different angle …Let´s see how the last 2 weeks break down:

0 CT footballs were chewed up by the local dog on the Plaza: an achievement!

1 old lady was unfortunately pushed over by one of us as we were playing in the Plaza and fell: nobody hurt though and all appropriate apologies were made & accepted..;0

2 girls from Fe y Alegría´s Choir accompanied Bernarda to sing with our kids in our Right to be Creative session last Wednesday

6 different instruments were created out of plastic bottles filled with sand/water/metal parts, wooden sticks & empty pots and used by the kids to accompany Bernarda in the CT Choir

8 is the weekly average of Cuéntamelo Todo´s team on site to play and accompany the kids in their reading & drawing activities, footie/volley & rope games along with all the thematic work and Mobile School activities we carry out

10 books were taken out by our kids over the last 2 Biblioteca Ambulante sessions and another 8 were returned to CT´s Biblioteca

12 kids were referred to our local partner, UMSC, for their first dental checks and were given their Cuéntamelo Todo keychain

15 kids got to visit the Tiánguez Café this week as part of our session on Rights in Practice: Accessing Culture…Another 15 got to play games across the Plaza to find out a little more about the key monuments and stories that make it up asking the locals

20 games in total were played throughout our last 6 sessions, with the majority being during the Monday Recreational Education sessions with Santi´s team

52 kids have joined the past 2 Monday sessions…bearing in mind last Monday we literally got to time to set up tent, prepare the Mobile School and the ¨aguacero¨ fell on us – we quickly encouraged the group of keen players to make their way home before we all caught a cold!

70 children joined us to take part in our Wednesday Rights & Reading sessions for a little Right to be Creative and Right to Access Culture

85 kids joined our Biblioteca Ambulante Thursday sessions for some more reading, Mobile School activities and play…the numbers have increased since we have the Mobile School, this is primarily because it is attracting people but also because we are out longer hours!

177 boards were used on the Mobile School combining alphabetization, mathematics, observation, motricity activities as well as the very popular magnetic games !

Next week, we will have a few CEFISTAS less as the more ¨mature¨ ones are passing their A level exams…we wish them luck! In the meantime, we will be welcoming again Miguel, our local artist who, through his finger-tip painting technique, has conquered quite a number of our kids. This week, working on the Right to Imagining, we will be doing a little 3-D painting on boxes we have collected from local shops. Next week, Gabriela & Lorena from the Defensoría del Pueblo will be back to tell us more about how ¨ la Solidaridad¨ can help us better fulfil our rights…

And so the fun begins...

2010-06-12T10:09:00.021-05:00

A resourful volleyball game using the Escuelita as the net!

In this week´s entry, we´ll be unraveling the past 2 weeks en imagenes and showing how el Mes del Niño kicked off with International Children´s Day on 2 June... illustrating Cuéntamelo Todo´s 10 hour weekly sessions on the Plaza San Francisco and how, through this project, our kids are re-appropriating it para, justamente, ser niños ! ;0

Monday

Muppet construction session from old donated socks (albeit a little large!), a couple of hand-made ties, happy & more serious cut-out mustaches, mismatched glittery eyes and woolly colourful hair...In a second, a couple of kids had pulled out the Mobile School´s teatrico and the show was on!

Tuesday

Exceptionally, we were out on the Plaza for the Dia del Niño to welcome kids from local schools who had been invited by the local authorities to partake in activities offered by the organisations part of this RED de la Niñez Callejizada. There were face mask & drawing activities as well as sporting & computer games surrounding a huge stage where music and clowns on stilts were animating the seated crowd. The Mobile School was a great source of attraction, both kids and their teachers came to interact (at times, overwhelmingly so!), we managed to count (or at least attempted to do so...) over 110 children in less than 3 hours!

Wednesday
Despite the fact summer is meant to have started it was a little wet that day. Few kids showed up but those who were present advised us on how to set up tent and shelter the Escuelita for them to play...We finally decided against taking it out as it got rainier but found some time to warm up & play a few games before everyone shot off !

Thursday

While some were keen on understanding the rotas on the Mobile School (the kids in the picture we actually just met during the Dia del Niño and had invited them to visit us again...they showed up 2 days later!;0), others chose to relax by the mobile library and have a snooze beside its books...

Monday

Using the Mobile School´s handle (with a home made extension!) and the Tianguez café´s door as posts, we secured a rope as net, marked the field with chalk, bought a new ball (as the local dog keeps on tearing our pelotas to shreds: 3

consumed in less than 2 weeks!)...and ya listo para una partida de volley! Meanwhile, the creative ones kept the inspiration up on the Mobile School...

Wednesday

Geoconda from the UMSC joined us to introduce the referal keychain we designed & are currently distributing to our kids through the 2nd wave of medical referrals, this time for dental checks. On the school was drawn a map of the plaza and a few local institutions for the kids to recognise where to go according to their needs..On the right, this was a little game of mimes on rights picked out of a bag...not exactly sure which right they were enacting there! ;0

Thursday

A gorgeous sunny day that brought many kids to pop by, play various games simultaneously (volley, footy, skipping rope & the popular magnetic games), as you can see on the blog´s entry pic . Meanwhile, others chose to browse a few books before borrowing them for the week. We are actually being fairly successful in our book recovery search, with ¨thought-to-be-lost¨ ones even reappearing! ;0

See you soon!

¡Acción!

2010-05-29T17:30:00.011-05:00

Last week, the Mobile School took a whole new dimension for the kids as they were invited to queue up the stairs leading to the Convento to be carried through and over its little theater opening…This was clearly a lot of fun for the less adventurous to watch and had a lot to do with trust and courage for those who managed to overcome their fears and crawl over the Mobile School´s ¨rooftop¨ to be recuperated on the other end by one of our team members!

After this new interaction with the Mobile School which had up until now essentially been an instrument of ¨learning from¨ its boards (the risk now, as some revealed this week, is that they decide to leap over it without notice, so we will be keeping it´s parking afar from stairs! ;0), the kids were invited to paint their faces in front of the mirror we had posted on it.

This is not the first time we do this kind of activity with the kids, and thankfully we have learnt from experience, so rather than having paint pots just at hand, our team was strategically positioned with the little pots in their hands to accompany the kids in their facial artwork. Last time did indeed turn into smudged faces, painted hands and dirty T-shirts (check out Play Time) with us having to do some serious facial scrubbing to avoid parental wrath. This time however, as you can see, was clean swift artistic expression that did not require any cleaning before departing especially as the kids were rather proud of their respective facial works! ;0

Once all were painted up to their taste, Henri and Santi, our leading Cefistas, invited the kids to settle down under our tent, with the Mobile School and its town centre boards as back drop. The theme of the day, after the previous week´s painting session with Miguel (Painting Thoughts), was to look at a new medium of expression: theatre and representation, with the facial artwork exercise illustrating it. So, after learning the works and uses of its jargon such as ¨corte¨ (¨cut¨), ¨luz¨ (¨lights¨) and ¨acción¨ (action), the kids turned into informed directors and invited the cefistas to perform for them. The first act was about a young boy wanting to buy ice cream but unfortunately never quite being quite able to express it properly so we return to his friend for a little help on how to say it with each time a new complication: clear communication and solidarity themes explored here. The kids giggled away, and at the end, clapped hands unanimously inviting the crew back with a few ¨otra otra otra¨! The Cefistas then proceeded in another little representation where Santi kept on waking to the same day in the Plaza (along the likes of Groundhog Day) going slowly bananas…the session however eventually drew to a close as we wrapped up, slightly late, but all content and sane!

The rest of the encuentros over these 2 weeks have been quite relaxed and seen quite a generous flow of children, who come, drop off their bags, play a few games with and around the school, and take off again. We are observing a new wave of recurring children who are reinforcing our ¨fixed¨ group and expanding Cuéntamelo Todo´s family, which is great news! As this week´s Monday 24 May was Bank Holiday celebrating the Battle of Pichincha which brought about Ecuador´s independence from Spain in 1822, we chose not to take to the Plaza: all kids were off school and their parents in general not working and perhaps even enjoying the national parades around town.

Our Mobile Library remains as eventful as ever despite the fact quite a few of our kids are too small to read, they just adore sitting around flicking through the images, drawing them and being read stories. Further to our Taking Stock… blog entry a couple of weeks ago, we are doing quite well in tracing the books that had gone astray; we may not exactly be ¨recuperating¨ these but we are finding out things like: ¨well, my little sister tore it to shreds¨, or ¨I haven´t lost it, I just lent it to my school library¨… a good learning curve for us in the face of such honesty! So, once trust has been reestablished through this communication update on the disappeared book status, settlement has been reached that lending will be re-initiated with a commitment by the loaner that a little more care & attention will be paid to the book as otherwise, at this rate, the Mobile Library will be left without anything to lend: a loss-loss situation for all!

Last week, after a few administrative twists, we finally managed to start the dentist checks and simultaneously, we have chosen to start distributing our Cuéntamelo Todo key chains (Taking Stock...). We will be introducing these to our kids in the next couple of weeks through practical games, i.e.: I have trouble at school and think I may need to some support classes, where do I go; or, I am feeling unwell, which medical centre I am closest to, etc.

Next week, the celebration of the ¨Mes del Niño¨ (¨Children´s Month¨) will kick off with the International Children´s Day on Tuesday 1st June. On this occasion, DS&H, along with other partner organizations part of the Red de Niñez Callejizada in Quito, an initiative launched by the Metropolitan Council for the Protection of Children and Adolescents (COMPINA), will be exceptionally setting up tent on the Plaza San Francisco all morning.

We will be present with the Mobile School ready to connect with the local schools that have been invited by the local authorities to visit the Plaza and connect with organizations & initiatives like ours that work towards restoring children´s rights. We will also be inviting our kids to the Tianguez café for a little afternoon show with Juan Fernando, a young clown we met recommended to them. So on we go with June´s festivities, a month that also announces in Ecuador´s northern hemisphere, summer holidays…

Painting thoughts…

2010-05-17T06:50:00.026-05:00

This picture pretty much resumes the last 2 weeks where we have been doing quite a lot of drawing and painting with and around the mobile school. Beyond the usual footy sessions and team games where kids learn to better know and trust each other through play, we have indeed been looking at the right to express ourselves freely through art and feel comfortable with it.

This week we actually chose to strip down the mobile school of its external laminas to provide the kids with large board spaces for them to do just that: express yourself! Miguel, a local artist who was with us last November (Freedom at the tip of a finger) and whose finger technique enables kids, of all ages, realize they each have the potential to be creative, was back with us for a little refresher.

This time, with the mobile school as additional support, he showed the kids a few new tips with and without the finger and later invited them to think about what it was they really wanted, what would make them feel good at that precise moment in time. He invited the kids to start out their brainstorm on the school but also offered small cartulinas to those who felt like testing out the finger technique first.

Thanks to a selection of chalks, all sorts emerged out of the escuelita´s boards, some opted for pretty landscapes with smiling flowers and welcoming houses, imagined tasty banana splits, depicted colourful skies with delicate butterflies whilst others preferred ¨sensing¨ what was around them and, and as you can see, inspired themselves for example in the Convento which majestically overlooks the Plaza.

Through these activities this week, the rapport with the escuelita was entirely different, it was no longer a place to look for challenging and competitive games but actually became a place where the kids could intimately share their visions of the moment…actually, a great space for us to read. A couple of us, along with Miguel, went around and invited the kids to share what it was they had painted and what it meant to them. Once the kids were comfortable with their creations, Miguel was waiting for them with a large fabric for them to express their artistic selves, with each having a little dedicated space to unravel their thoughts…

Beyond these activities, we have had over the past 2 weeks the more serious kids who prefer carrying on with their math exercises and testing one another through more literacy- based games…they return at each session, asking for more of the same, each time awaiting a new colour (remember, green being the easiest and red the hardest!) to challenging themselves further. As you know, we have been a little shy with our sessions lately, last week we have had to cancel again as it poured and another ¨grippe¨ stranded a few of us to bed. The expectations for us to show up have consequently built up a little recently, and the kids have been incredibly keen and excited to see the school and biblioteca ambulante, with more demands on what we have to offer be it games, books, activities and mobile school laminas: all a step closer to Cuentamelo Todo being, as it should be, led by our children…

Next week, as we kick off the sunny season (por fin!), we will be looking again at how we can express ourselves through theatre…Henry and Santi along with the other Cefistas will be challenging them in the co-creation of a little play desde la escuelita: beyond encouraging the kids to resort to and trust the imaginative spaces within them, the idea is also for them, through this recreational activity, to build something of their own together and have fun in doing so.

Taking stock...

2010-05-01T19:21:00.033-05:00

Despite it being quite clear that winter is out to get us with its prevailing grey skies and daily drizzle, this has not deterred us over the past two weeks from setting up tent on the Plaza- be it a little more quiet than usual... Now, the fact that our new local storage space is located at such unimaginably-close-to-dreamlike vicinity clearly has something to do with it. In less that 7mns (and this is ¨driving¨ it safe & soundly!), we are out, on display and ready to play…this means that conversely, we are able to whip it all up and swiftly seek shelter before the showering skies take us by surprise!! ;0

What has been a slight ¨cooler¨ these last few days however has been a circulating cold between the kids, Cuéntamelo Todo´s team and some external contributors, leaving us slightly runny nosed, red-eyed and voiceless, as was the case last week for example with Gladys & Geoconda, our local heath centre partner reps. Despite the rain this week, they managed to make it with a couple of bags of fresh fruits and other healthy foods to talk to the kids about the importance of eating well.

As you may remember, we have already covered this topic with the UMSC last year (Some Food for Thought) but as we are proceeding with the referrals of our kids to this health centre, acute vitamin deficiencies have been diagnosed, many of which that can easily be overcome if the right foods are eaten. And for that to be reality, well it simply helps to be informed about which ones these are, why and where to find them! To reinforce this session we had a couple of boards on that specific theme posted on la escuelita; post Gladys & Geoconda´s intervention, the kids naturally picked up on these in an informed manner…the message had thus been received and the mission accomplished.

As you will see (please meet ¨El Galpon¨), we have successfully managed this week to dress up our storage space with the mobile school´s 250 boards and sorted these by themes and difficulty levels to be able to better visualize our stock and alternate the games for our kids to make the most out of what we actually have to offer. This past & next couples of weeks are an interesting tester to see in fact which ones we are using & how the kids are responding.

Now that we are out 3 times weekly and that we have had over 700 different kids visit us since we started Cuéntamelo Todo a year ago, it is exciting to see how those who are returning adapt and interact with our new didactic tool. It is clearly another platform to spend some time alone or accompanied by one of us, a sibling or parent, concentrate, challenge oneself, and compete &/or play with a friend or a complete stranger, with at times even, an opportunity to make a new friend…

Also, when before some kids would shyly stand in front of a game and it was our challenge to reach out & explain before they hustled off, you now hear an ¨Oyé Seño¨ and feel something drag you (by the hand if you are lucky!) to a designated game for a swift explanation. This indeed shows curiosity, no fear and a legitimate ¨if this is here for me to play then I should know how it works¨- a clear right put in practice!

On Thursdays, Cuéntamelo Todo´s mobile library is still lending its books- some 250 books have been loaned to the kids since we first started last October. We have recently taken stock of the books and to our surprise a few have gone astray... The challenge is hence at the moment to help our kids remember to remind their parents (& themselves!) to bring these back as part of the deal of is: a book lent for a book returned! Time will tell…;0

Next week, we should be starting to refer our kids for dental checks at the UMSC. We will be initiating with the 50-odd kids who have already completed blood & preventive checks and are now registered at the health centre. We will use this second wave of referrals as an opportunity to distribute the little ¨Cuéntamelo Todo¨ keychain we have designed. This holds information on existing local institutions that provide free services for children such as shelter, food, education, as well as psychological, legal and medical attention. All the information is listed in such a way that kids, once they have identified their need & corresponding institution, can also locate it on a map and, should they need to, find their way themselves.

Entre lluvias y vientos.....

2010-04-19T08:45:00.012-05:00

En las últimas semanas el tiempo se portó poco comprensible con los ánimos de juego de nuestros guaguas. Así, un par de encuentros se redujeron a leer, jugar y contar chistes bajo el solo espacio de la carpa; evitando mojarse con una lluvia bien brava, cuidando que esta misma lluvia no acabe con nuestra carpita que hasta ahora estuvo bajo la protección y el cuidado del Taita Inti!

Sin embargo hay que reconocer que este cielito andino nos dio un receso el miércoles 7, y a buena hora porque justo nos dio el espacio para que estos angelitos del coro nos hagan cantar y tocar instrumentos imaginarios como tanto nos gusta! Y así el mes de Abril arrancó con nuestra amiga ya bien conocida, tan alegre y alhaja, la Bernada! Arroz con Leche, La muñequita de papel, Caballo viejo, tantas canciones a cantar y tan poco tiempo….

Sin embargo tanto Bernarda con los niños del coro nos prometieron regresar pronto para seguir con este corito de la plaza que poco a poco estamos formando (-;

Sin correr con tanta suerte para sus intervenciones de la siguiente semana, las compañeras de la Defensoría del Pueblo, Gabriela y Geovana, tuvieron que improvisar desde el Tianguiez, donde nos refugiamos una media horita después del inicio del encuentro por la lluvia, una actividad bien interesante: Dividiendo los niños en 4 grupos, les pidieron en base a fotos, dibujos, y letras, recapitular los derechos que vieron hasta ahora en los encuentros Cuéntamelo Todo. Cada grupo al presentar su trabajo tuvo que cantar o gritar una porra, simpático!

Ese mismo día, Jorge Uribe, Sub-director de Fe y Alegría había venido a visitarnos para conversar con los guaguas y ver el trabajo de los pedagogos con la escuela móvil. Había aprovechado al llegar este día, para visitar el nuevo galpón de DS&H en la plaza San Francisco. Este galpón es un real alivio porque permite tener guardada la carpa, biblioteca ambulante, escuela móvil y las 250 láminas en un solo lugar. Hasta la fecha, el material estaba dividido entre el Convento San Francisco, el Tianguez, la oficina regional de Fe y Alegría, y las oficinas de DS&H en San Juan...por lo tanto ustedes se imaginaran la logística!

Luego, y mientras los niños hacían su collage, Jorge con el apoyo de Ricky igualmente de Fe y Alegría, inició una ronda de entrevista sobre el proyecto, sus avances, los retos, las herramientas pedagógicas utilizadas, la receptividad de los participantes, etc. a DS&H, al pedagogo principal Christian, a unos cefistas con Henry en cabeza, a la Defensoria del Pueblo, y por supuesto a algunos de nuestros niños fascinados por el hecho de ser filmados!

Para terminar este día un poco diferente y paliar al frió, el Tianguez nos regaló a todos, incluyendo a unas mamás que se habían colado en vista del mal tiempo, un chocolate caliente que fue super bienvenido!

Y así va Cuéntamelo Todo y su escuelita...

2010-04-07T21:55:00.007-05:00

Este mes de marzo se acabó con una escuela móvil en marcha y claramente objeto de fascinación para los guaguas de la zona y sus familias. Al acercarse la hora de llegada de este vagón raro, todos están pendientes, y apenas se deja ver una de sus partes en una esquina de San Francisco, los niños van corriendo a su encuentro. Unos para montarse encima y otros para ayudar al equipo a empujar a la escuelita hasta la carpa.

Esta escuelita como ya lo pudieron y podrán observar siguiendo este blog, se presenta como un pequeño cajón con ruedas que se puede jalar por la calle. Tiene pizarras en sus cuatros lados sobre las cuales se puede dibujar o colgar laminas educativas. También se puede desplegar por las dos extremidades, ofreciendo paneles adicionales en los cuales se puede poner más laminas educativas y recreativas, y así convertirse en un soporte pedagógico de 12 metros.

La verdad es que esta escuelita es muy llamativa y tiene de todo para todos: Juegos para chiquitos o grandes; para uno solo o con sus panas; de alfabetización, creatividad, matemáticas, motricidad, origami, y otros aprendizajes; hasta tiene un mini teatro! Este teatro es genial para jugar y aprender con marionetas.

Este material fue diseñado más que todo para fortalecer la autoestima del niño en situación de riesgo, desde su ámbito, dándole consciencia de sus talentos y capacidades. Lo cual refuerza y complementa fuertemente el trabajo de educación popular y apoyo social que viene ofreciendo Cuéntamelo Todo desde más de diez meses.

En estas primeras sesiones con la escuela móvil, el equipo junto en un par de ocasiones, con la Unidad Metropolitana de Salud Centro (UMSC), usó su teatrín para abordar temas de salud e higiene, explicando gracias a títeres de niños y peluches en forma de boca, de cepillo y de barriga, la importancia de tener un cuerpito y unos dientes sanos, de cuidarlos y de comer balanceado. También sirvió para mostrar lo que nos pasa cuando nos olvidamos de lavarnos o cuando comemos demasiado comida chatarra….

En estas semanas de marzo, también pudimos seguir con la identificación socioeconómica, así como el proceso de referencia de los niños a entidades de atención. Hasta la fecha logramos identificar y referir a 80 niños. Estas referencias fueron hechas a centros educativos o de apoyo escolar, comedores, y de forma sistemática a la UMSC para chequeos pediátricos completos y exámenes de laboratorio. En los próximos días estaremos iniciando con todos los chequeos odontológicos.

La Escuelita en marcha

2010-03-15T22:56:00.014-05:00

After 2 weeks of a fairly intensive training with the Mobile School crew reflecting and playing around key themes like self esteem, creativity and recreational therapy with children in the street context, we finally took to the streets with La Escuelita!

Not only was today an unusual day because we are not normally out Mondays but we also arrived lumbered with a rather large coach on wheels. To access our usual spot we also had to run up a narrow street en contravia (but hey…) making a huge detour around the Plaza attracting quite a lot of the Plaza´s locals´(shoe shiners, drinkers, retiree) attention…A quick reminder: the Mobile School is a large green square (on which one can draw with chalk), that measures when opened-up at its full capacity some 1.50 meters and weighs some 400kgs. The weight of the beast is linked to the sturdiness of its beauty no doubt but also to the 250 panels it contains tackling critical themes for children such as alphabetization, nutrition, creativity, health, etc.

So we arrived, after having distributed this morning a few ¨pulgitas¨ inviting the kids to attend our new session, a little late…as dressing up la Escuelita for the day takes some time! One needs to think about what (theme/game) to put where, how much of what: a little more concentration tasks, or a few more drawing games…what the heck! But perhaps a little more calculation could be challenging, or associating colours, simply fun. Once geared for the occasion and the required number of hands had arrived, we reeled our new gem across the city-centre, stopping traffic (being a 6foot2 ¨gringa¨ helps at times!) and asking for local police´s help for crossing, we eventually made it some 20mns late.

The kids ran up to some of us, a little perplexed, asking what it was we had there, what was inside, what they could do, and even what they needed to do…Funny how there is no age for routine. Once it was all unraveled to them, the kids made their way around & about, perusing the options and stopping here & there. Needless to say our tent along with the few books we have available for consultation were a pretty ¨unsexy¨ offer next to la Escuelita! Most of our Fe y Alegria students together with a few of our pedagogues were posted at different games to lead or support the kids in their election and explain to them how to play when unclear.

The interesting concept about this whole Mobile School really is, self-learning. One can choose to do so in groups, pairs or even alone. Kids can freely walk about, pick up an activity, give the wheel a spin, try their luck and just move on. Nothing holds them to it, beyond their personal interest, and that is the key to our real challenge.

So, la Escuelita won the hearts of quite a few of them today, a few we know well actually. These are kids who mainly accompany their parents in their daily jobs when outside of school, if they don´t work themselves…which means they spend most of their days in close vicinity, on the street. This school could become their new friend as we have just been approved our extension to 10 hours weekly. A few of their parents passed by too and mentioned how they thought it was an ingenious idea- indeed it is a great concept, and we are super chuffed to have been elected a Mobile School ¨carrier/holder/messenger¨ here in Ecuador!

The next step is to find a safe little shed close bye for la Escuelita so that we can move the beauty with ease without rushing her around unsafely. And the next real exciting challenge is to ensure we integrate this comprehensive didactic gem to our activities in a creative and dynamic manner as it has unbelievable capacities to contribute to expanding our kids ‘realities as well as imaginaries.

Keep watching this space as we take new directions...

This week´s scoop

2010-03-05T20:45:00.002-05:00

From next month, we will in the Plaza 3 times a week: Mondays, Wednesdays (day on which we write up) and Thursdays! We are delighted to have been granted this authorization by the Quito Municipio as this means our work in the street will be taken up to 10 hours! Strengthened by the Mobile School we will be providing our kids (and new ones to become we trust!) with longer hours, new spaces and innovative tools for them to discover a world full of opportunities to express themselves, play, enjoy and learn!

Ways forward...

2010-03-05T19:41:00.014-05:00

This week was very musical as we opted to make a little ¨retro¨ session on the right to choose and opt for the many paths that exist in life. Indeed through looking as we did over the past 4 months at the right to participate, be educated, be informed, stay healthy, eat well and be creative enabling our kids to understand the importance of fulfilling these rights, they also got little snapshots at the sort of activities and jobs one could do to ¨live these out¨. For example, we had a journalist from Fe y Alegría who informed us on how and where information could be found and how it could enrich you, a professional chef (not Ratatouille but Jerome!) that whipped up some healthy recipes from a simple cheap buy, Bernarda the singer who revealed to the kids that, with a little concentration, they could all emit harmonizing sounds! ;0 So basically, the kids discovered the world-full of opportunities that exist beyond their own reality, opening up doors not only to alternatives but also to their own creativity and imaginations- after a session where we sang songs to a melodious guitar, one of our kids decided she was going to pick up harp! (...go figure)

Despite the grey drizzly sky this week, the Cuéntamelo Todo crowd carried on as if nothing would perturb the planned musical session- we had actually decided to stay there whether it rained or not…as, despite the fact we had the go-ahead, making a racket in the Convent was perhaps not the most appropriate! ;0 During an informal ¨ tuning in¨ to the sound of a rather discordant keyboard and full-blasting mic, a couple of our kids (who have taken to wearing our jackets) went from participant to participant asking them to speak up their name. They would occasionally make some personalization to these…leading to a couple of group giggles and attracting quite a few curious passers-by.

Rob and Antonia from the Mobile School, the Belgium organization that is currently training our team (more info coming soon…this is a rather intensive but a very interesting time for our team!), were immediately enrolled in this session as we discovered last week that Antonia is a professional puppeteer, story teller and Cuatro venezuelano player (smaller version of guitar with 4 strings) and Rob, a discreet but very talented & versatile musician! So together with Christian, our pedagogue, they were to lead on a couple of instruments that our new puppet friend, Jacinto, straight from Venezuela, was going to introduce to us. Indeed, after a few warm up games linked to our topic of the day, namely that of choice, Jacinto told us about the various options he had elected to make his way to la Plaza San Francisco.

He explained how he had come from far away; a country called Venezuela, and had chosen to come by land rather than by air, over mountains rather than by sea, to finally come to the Plaza San Francisco rather than la Plaza Santo Domingo. This little session enabled the kids to smoothly understand the concept of choice…which was to be reinforced by the musical workshop we were going to have. Jacinto then went on to introduce each instrument and musician, who then struck a chord for the kids to recognize its sound. As we hopped from instrument to instrument, Christian asked what each instrument was called, there was a little confusion when we got to the keyboard and a majority, without previous consultation, said ¨a Casio¨…Christian smiled and got the kids to look at the bus passing the square asking them what the bus was called, ¨a bus¨ or ¨a Toyota¨? All the kids laughed, and concurred in calling the Casio a piano!

After a couple of exercises on comparisons which started with the logical step of observing, making oneself familiar with each instrument and then looking at what each was composed of, we listened, thanks to Christian and Henry´s orchestrating, to each instrument, decided whether they were melodious to us and then tried to recognize these eyes wide shut (!!).

Christian then invited them to choose the instrument of their choice and join the corresponding group. So as each little workshop welcomed its participants, the kids had the option to listen to a few melodies, sing along to a couple of tunes they all knew & had chosen together and when confident, could actually tap a few notes, strike a few chords and, as we can see from the photo, do some serious drumming! Most of the kids stuck to their initial group and actually got quite into it whilst a few glided from group to group to drop an ear to sounds they had perhaps neither heard before nor had a chance to listen to on its own.

Finally, the CEFISTAS gathered the kids on the Plaza to play and relax a little enabling Christian, Rob and Antonia to rehearse the song Cuéntamelo Todo´s crowd, kids and adults included, has a soft spot for: Color Esperanza. When they were ¨listo¨, all kids regrouped under the tent to sing along to their melodious tune before greeting goodbye with quite a few kids asking whether we would be back tomorrow- as the following day, was Thursday- the day of our Biblioteca Ambulante.

Creativity en vivo

2010-02-26T19:06:00.021-05:00

This week the kids left with extraordinary calm and quietness slightly bewildered by the day’s session. Some parents, who had joined us on the stairs to either relax a moment from their daily jobs or just passing by, also expressed how “ that lady had an incredible voice”...Out of a Botticelli painting with a voice that transcends the skies, this woman is Bernarda. She has headed up for numerous years now Fe y Alegría’s Children’s Choir (Coro Infantil), initially funded by the Andean Development Bank and which developed throughout Latin America. The formative value of this choir has been significant for the participating children in strengthening their self-esteem made visible through enhanced personal confidence, improved academic results and family relationships, etc.

At the heart of the coro’s success lies Bernarda’s fundamental belief that everyone, if given the opportunity, has the potential for creativity, and in this instance a voice, that, with self-trust, patience, work and time, can be developed into something life-changingly powerful for self-growth. So over the past couple of months, we have been in chats with Bernarda to see how we could provide such a opportunity for our kids. We looked at what sort of approach we could resort to and settled on the fact that a little open-air session with a few of her choir children would be a wonderful space for our kids to connect with music, en vivo, through little kids just like themselves.

So, in the presence of Rob & Antonia from the Mobile School (Special exciting feature: la Escuelita Movil) we cracked into the session with a couple of ice breakers lead by Santi and a couple of our CEFISTA girls. (Henry, post having been elected CEFISTA Logistics Leader this weekend, close to gave us no-show that day!) The little kids in red uniforms you see in the pictures are part of Bernarda’ s band- as you may not know, in this part of the world, most state schools have uniforms (schooling fees are free except for uniforms and basic stationeries). Lorena, our pedagogue, before introducing Bernarda, rapidly took the kids through last week session where we (finally! For more on that check, Play time) watched a film, Ratatouille.

Lorena invited the kids to tell her a little more about it- “So, it’s the story about 2 bears arguing right?” “No, no! Didn't you get the film at all? ” shouted back the kids, “It’s about a rat” ; as she could not seem to get it right, one of our kids got up to help explain the story of this little rat who had a special gift and passion for cooking and despite not quite being “made” for it, persisted until he became the reputed chef he deserved to be. This little introductory session gave way to a few giggles and set the tone nicely for what was to come, namely exploring new sensations and our creativity.

After she stepped in and introduced herself as “ Hi, my name is Bernarda” and asked who those little kids were sitting opposite her under the tent, Bernarda broke into a few sound and breathing exercises, immediately captivating the kids by the sheer number of facial expressions, sounds and movements she was making herself. It was quite amazing to see how some of those we know well and generally have an attention span of half a second or love to appear “blasé” were smacked with bemused faces, and so swiftly game to mimicking Bernarda. So, on they all went unanimously, with the little red crowd part of the singing exercise but never quite introduced as “The Choir”, to maintain momentum and avoid setting barriers between “ those who know how” and “those who don’t”.

Bernarda then divvied up the group and got us to make different sounds and beats with our hands, feet, mouths, until we had a solid rhythm going and she could wrap her melodious voice to it. And there it was- the first Coro de la Plaza San Francisco!! After a few different tunes, where she then invited some of the kids (choir & non) to accompany her singing, she then asked the group if they wanted to listen to a little song by the Coro (this was as official as the presentation was going to get!) to then sing along. Instantly all the kids were up, the choir kids gathered together and a verse sung to the rest responded, all under Bernarda’s energetic orchestrated beats .

Once we reached the end of this organically dynamic session, we invited the kids to tell us whether it would be a good idea to invite Bernarda back to the Plaza... there was an immediate chorused “Siiiiiiiiiiiiii”! Bernarda then took the kids aside, thanked them for their hard work and attention, and as she was handing out a honey sweet to each informed that she had given Cuéntamelo Todo’s Biblioteca Ambulante a CD of the Coro Infantil, “this means you can take turns when you want in borrowing it, like the books!”, she said, “and in the meantime, the Biblioteca will look after it!”. All the kids agreed this was a sensible decision and thanked her for the present. Bernarda will be back with us in 2 weeks to explore new sounds and movements, and provide our kids again with a sensational space for them to feel comfortably creative, with themselves and others, in the sound of music.

Special exciting feature: la escuelita movíl!

2010-02-24T20:25:00.001-05:00

This week we are starting a monthly training with a new partner, Mobile School, a Belgium organisation which works with NGOs worldwide providing them with a tool, The Mobile School, that seeks through its educational materials to strengthen children’s self esteem, self-worth, and therefore personal growth. DS&H, and notably our joint project with Fe y Alegría, Cuéntamelo Todo, has been selected to bring to life its 30^th school!

On Monday, Rob and Antonia arrived in Quito respectively from Belgium and Venezuela to run us through this innovative organisation and socialise us with its wonderfully didactic tool that will become a pillar to our forthcoming sessions on the Plaza. Now beyond weighing some odd 420kgs and measuring over 1m50 long (!), this educational tool designed for street work holds 250 panels that can be undone, dismantled to be rejoined and assembled according to the topic of the day...Over 10 themes ranging from alphabetization, mathematics to therapeutic games and health issues will hence be available for the kids to interact with. There is also space for the creative ones of our Cuéntamelo Todo team to develop other panels to cover new localized themes...

As part of this partnership, Cuéntamelo Todo will be working more extensively in the street so we are currently applying to the local authorities for longer hours and an additional day that will take our presence on the Plaza up to over 10 hours weekly! Over the next month, Rob & Antonia will take us through all types of themes & issues that will prepare us resort to these tools imaginatively and creatively to best provide our eclectic bunch of kids with the soundest space to play, learn, develop and grow as they are entitled to.

We’ll keep you posted on this learning curve...

Exploring ways to express ourselves...

2010-02-19T16:22:00.011-05:00

Over the past two sessions, we have been working around the concept of freedom of expression and participation. As few children ended up joining these sessions due to exams and temperamental weather, it was an opportunity at times for FyA’s pedagogues and cefistas to offer one to one activities.

So we launched our one-before-last session with a brief but somewhat serious discussion around the right to freedom of opinion and expression, namely the importance of holding personal and independent opinions, as well as the different ways to impart these and receive other people’s ideas.

We then moved on to more entertaining stuff and divided into two teams. The aim was to communicate ideas and expressions differently with one group acting these out and the other singing and playing guitar.

After a good 20mn preparation, the teams reverted back to the tent for the show to start. The acting part was quite cute, though it was not entirely clear that the rest of the kids really got the essence of what the actual message was. ;-0 Things however were much clearer with our newborn musicians who offered an entertaining repertoire of songs, with a couple even leading on guitar! As the energy and excitement reached its peak, the little performing band’s song grew to the whole group breaking into quitenian slang (which was quite hilarious!) to then end in an interesting range of mimicked languages (also worth a listen!)- all this of course to clapping hands and hopping and skipping bodies...a creative set of expressions it was indeed!

After this little jam session, we asked the kids whether they enjoyed that day’s activities, which they most preferred over the past month and how they would like the future encuentros to be. With this information successfully collected, we began sketching a first draft of articles for Cuéntamelo Todo’s Declaration. We have to admit this has been in the pipeline for a while, has been touched upon on many occasions with the kids but seems somehow to be growing very organically each time and certainly unwilling to stop!

The following session, closely linked to the previous theme, was on participation and was led by our cefista star, Henry, also known as our “Principito”. Henry, who had a drastic cold that day, began by underlying the fact that daily we take part in many activities within and beyond home, school, etc. and that, as part of the Cuéntamelo Todo group, the kids could for example choose to organise in an Assembly and discuss matters from these different participatory spaces that affect them directly. The aim of the discussion was to encourage our little citizens to understand there are various ways of participating (looking, listening, speaking, and voting), voice their viewpoints and to take these on board. To do so, Henry used as a starting point Cuéntamelo Todo’s Declaration of Rights draft which (if you please) had been copied out onto an old-style looking parchment paper!

The kids gathered on the stairs to oversee the articles and decide whether, as a group, they agreed or not with these. Technically speaking, there was no voting; however a few consensual amendments were made, removing some articles and creating new ones. Interestingly enough, after the rights’ part was finished, the discussion naturally went on to responsibilities. So Henry handed out another parchment type paper, to become the Declaration of Responsibilities, where the kids started matching obligations to the rights they had elected in the first Declaration.

With Cuéntamelo Todo’s first Assembly being drawn to a close, Christian, one of our pedagogues, suggested the kids selected a book (we always have a few available for those who like to browse at the beginning & end of sessions), and together with a grown-up tried to pinpoint some of the rights and obligations we had just covered together.

This exercise turned out to be a real success with the kids highlighting text elements which related to their Declarations.

The day ended softly with each returning their elected book and hugging the team goodbye.

Play time...

2010-01-21T11:49:00.005-05:00

Before we launch into this week´s excitments, we wanted to apologise for disappearing, we had a little technical he-cup last week that left us with a somewhat uneventful session- a possible flop one might call it! Gaby from the Defensoria joined us in the Convento San Francisco´s patio to view Little Desperteaux which she had introduced the week before…except we never managed to make the film work. The session thus turned into a trick of patience and self-control as the kids watched us, bemused, struggle against faulty technology, making various calls to technical-wizz colleagues, rushing around with new dvds, switching cables. It took us over an hour to eventually give up and decide that: well, after all, these things just happen! The kids played with us a little, helped us fold up and wandered off with no hard feelings…

Indeed, they were all back yesterday for a proper fun day as it was all about the right to play and recreation. Technically, how did that translate and how was that any different from our other sessions? Well…for starters, the Cefistas were in charge of the entire session and the rest of us, including the kids, were their little executing ants…Our mission in preparation of the session? Sourcing 15 mini soft balls, rope, small pots with a rim (!), material for blind-folding, facial paint, white chark and finally, small panels indicating the following: ¨Cuidado - niños jugando¨, ¨Juntos estamos unidos¨, etc.

As soon as we arrived charged like mules, Henri and Santi took charge of our materials and with the kids, who followed them around curiously supervising their every move, began setting up ¨el juego de pista¨ starting with delimiting the game field and posting on our (the team) backs the panels.

Before we initiated this main game, a little warm-up session was planned to foster what we call ¨compañerismo¨. This translated into the two teams moving & shaking, chanting as well as screeching louder than the other. Swiftly the cefistas launched into the explanation of ¨el juego de pista¨ to an excited (and not so concentrated) group and invited them to take up its first challenge: blind-folded, find the balls with the help of your team-mates. This led to much laughter as some took to displacing & misleading them.

Second challenge: to walk through the game field with, posted on the head, the ball in its pot, without having it fall of course or else, back to square one… again, not an easy one, but quite a hit! In the land of mobility and agility, pen-ultimate challenge: step in and through the rope´s loops along the ground in a long tight-knit hand-holding group. Last but not least, paint your teammates faces…

It all got a little more complex when some, who had gotten a little carried away and had literally surface-pasted their faces as well as hands, asked to wash them. We, for some strange reason, had completely omitted this possible ¨post-creation¨ moment…our lack of foresight got us running around, with a potentially impatient but amused crew, asking the Tianguez for basins and rushing to the loos for warm water and soap. Eventually, all our kids got in a single queue, and one by one, each got their little facial…scrub! ;0 Good job we had thought about buying water based paint and not oil…

So the plan to ensure the kids had their bit of fun whilst at the same time working on values that promoted companionship, leadership, trust and respect were pretty much achieved. The idea for them to realize that there is a space available to ¨be¨ kids, and enjoy freely being so was, we think, successful. This was made obvious when, come the end of the session they were all pretty relaxed and energy unloaded…which is always a good sign! At the end of the session, Henri and the rest of the supporting team queried informally whether they had enjoyed themselves, and would they be up for doing this again … To much of our distress, they seem to be up for this weekly- not sure we would be able to keep up as their group stamina does reach peaks! ;0

Next week, Alfonso, our story-teller, will be back for a more relaxed ¨laughter¨ session as we will be covering the right to laugh; he will be counting the kids a couple of ¨chistes¨ and inviting them to tell their own.

Let’s dream together!

2010-01-08T17:40:00.015-05:00

This week was yet another wonderful encuentro with many of our little companions au rendez-vous! As it was all about dreaming and sharing dreams, we all started painting our dreams and helping Gaby from the Defensoria del Pueblo blow these into multicolored balloons. Gaby also used this special moment as an opportunity to chat with the kids about other rights we had previously looked at such as How to relax, Let’ s talk about rights, etc.

The initial plan this week was for Gaby to work around the projected film “The tale of Despereaux”. Unfortunately, over the last couple of months, Ecuador has been undergoing a period of severe drought and consequently witnessing a strict electrical diet! The scheduling and related communications on these daily power cuts not always being fully accurate, we were effectively left Wednesday afternoon with no electricity, hence no film!

Fortunately this did not stop the kids from wanting to find out more about little Despereaux’s story… Why not narrate it we thought? Gaby, with the help of a couple of impersonifying cefistas, took on the challenge enabling the kids to embark on the wonderful journey of several unlikely heroes: Despereaux, a brave mouse banished to a dungeon for speaking with a human; Roscuro, a good-hearted rat, exiled to darkness; Pea, a Princess in a gloomy castle imprisoned by her father; and Mig, a servant who longs to be a Princess, but is forced to serve the jailer.

Cute and tiny with rather oversized ears, Despereaux was born too big for his little world. Refusing to live his life hiding away, he befriends Pea and learns to read. Banished from Mouse world for being more man than mouse, Despereaux is rescued by another outcast, Roscuro, who also wants to hear the tales. But when the Princess dismisses Roscuro's friendship, he becomes the ultimate rat and plots revenge with fellow outsider Mig. After Pea is kidnapped, Despereaux decides that even the tiniest mouse can find the courage of a knight in shining armor. The message was clear: 'Esquemas' (though not values!) had to be broken, and what you look like doesn't equate to what you are!

The kids were so delighted with the story and relaxed by it, they jointly decided to lie down and share their hopes and dreams for the future with the rest of the team. This was just an exquisite moment, which was closely followed by them humming Cuéntamelo Todo’s favourite, and soon to become OUR song, “Color esperanza”!

As you may remember, we were unable to give the kids our presents before Christmas (to find out why, check out A world-full of choices) and this week seemed like the perfect opportunity. So, after having their names called out, each kid stood up to pick up our present, a little book, together with a small candy bag and a balloon-full of dreams….needless to say, the kids were pretty chuffed by all this!

Next week, we will pursue our journey through the right to dream and choose. We look forward to seeing you then (and to reading your comments/suggestions!;-0) and, wish you all again, from this sunny and beautiful end of the Andes, a joyful and fruitful 2010!

A world-full of choices…

2009-12-30T23:36:00.003-05:00

With holidays starting and Christmas in the air, last Wednesday was festive and buzzing, making it yet again quite unusual as well as a bundle of fun…

Contrary to custom, the team arrived a little earlier with this time a larger-than-normal group of kids waiting for us. To be honest with you (and realistic with ourselves!), quite a few of them were there before time to welcome the long-awaited Alfonso, alias Licenciado Vurro (Professor Donkey), who used to be Cuéntamelo Todo’s exclusive story teller over the project’s first few months. Most of our kids have been with us since we started, and many have regularly asked after ”El Vurro”… so today was an important rendezvous for which one had to be geared-up and on time!

Thanks to the help of some 15 little elves, we swiftly set up tent on the Plaza- it appears some of our kids have sussed out faster than some of the team members (;-0!) how to assemble the tent’s pieces... Instantly, books, papers and colour crayons started blooming beneath the tent. For those who were feeling more bouncy, games were initiated led by the cefistas, FyA’s team of student volunteers.

In less than half an hour, over 40 Cuéntamelo Todo’s stickers were handed out and Monica, our social worker, was having a hard time tracking down names and associating faces. This was enhanced by a noisy cluster of requesting mothers gathered around her asking for las navidades, a custom in this country which, in the run-up to Christmas, translates into gift distributions generally by charities and religious institutions. After explaining what Cuéntamelo Todo was all about and how that was not part of what we did, the crowd, which had doubled thanks to curious and inquisitive newcomers, finally dispersed enabling us to launch into the tale of the week.

“La maquina de cuando sea grande” is a really nice story by Mercedes Falconi about a scientist who creates a machine, which enables one to travel into the future as well as back into the past of one’ s life. Over 50 kids snuggled up under the tent, and as they were captivated by ”El Vurro” there was not a sound emanating from them- you could have heard a pin drop! As soon the story ended, many of the kids insisted on sharing with the rest of the crew what they would like to be when they grow up.

As part of recapping the values and rights we look to emphasize with the kids, ”El Vurro” then talked about how things we do today may affect our future, hence the importance of decision-making, and how in that process, there are many possibilities and outcomes. There is the chance, for example, that in your choice-making, you find you “got it wrong“... though as he underlined, “what does getting it wrong actually mean?” Nothing is ever totally wrong or right, there is always something good to get out of a choice you made and learning from that is an important part of that process.

”El Vurro” finished off this session with a series of jokes and riddles for the children to solve. A few of them decided to stand up and address the group with some other, more complicated ones giving way to a few more giggles! It is really great to see how many of our kids, most of whom share the Plaza outside of schooling hours, now have befriended each other thanks to Cuéntamelo Todo, play together during and beyond our sessions... and thus live another one of their key rights, one which we will be covering over the next months, namely the right to play.

To wrap up the session, the cefistas had organized a series of mime games for the smaller kids, including one where professions were to be guessed. The other children stayed in the tent with our guest of the day and split into groups for a little timed competition: make a sentence out of numbered colour letters. As you would expect all the groups made it on time!

As it was the last session before Christmas, we had decided to give our kids a book with a little note from the team, together with some candies the cefistas had brought. Unfortunately, with the higher turnout and the hefty motherly expectations, we decided to postpone it to the New Year, when our regular kids will be back. … The joys of working in the street for you- another work in progress and an entertaining process...

As it is holidays, we will be off this week to return next Wednesday 6 January with the Defensoria del Pueblo who will be looking at 'the right to get it wrong' starting off with a film….so until then, we wish you all a very happy 2010!!

Let´s get connected...

2009-12-17T22:25:00.015-05:00

Yesterday we learned a little more about the right to information. Manuel from IRFEYAL, Fe y Alegria´s sister radio organization, was there to introduce to kids what information is, what his job as a journalist actually consists in and how he makes it available to people. IRFEYAL is part of the general international popular education movement and provides all around Latin America distance learning classes to adults via its radio stations.
After an interesting tent set up that lasted little longer than usual…we were finally able to start :-)Today, our team was actually somewhat larger than life; Henri and Santi had brought a few more CEFA girls interested in getting involved in our project. These girls immediately took the kids to some energetic warm up games.

Manuel then invited the kids to take a little virtual tour into the world of communications. He started out by asking them if they knew a story and if they wanted to share it… Swiftly, one of our little talkative ones perched herself on Santi´s arms to tell her own story to the group- her imagination is known to be vivid! After this introduction, and thanks to his calm voice and respectful demeanor, Manuel managed to catch the kids´ attention by asking them simple questions such as where does information come from, how does it actually come to you. ¨Through a very long cable¨ said a kid, ¨ through a person¨, added another one, ¨yes¨ Manuel confirmed, ¨and how do you call that person exactly?¨, ¨a journalist¨ shouted another kid.

Once that was clear, and the kids finally understood what Manuel was up to with his days, off we went back to how we could all listen or view a same information from a box that could be in any house across borders … the kids were captivated by this new world of abstract waves that indeed enables us to watch the ¨Chavo del ocho¨ in Ecuador as in Mexico… Manuel further stressed, ¨can you see those antennas?¨ pointing to the San Francisco rooftops, ¨thanks to these, we can receive an image coming from the other side of the world , like China¨. All the kids nodded reflectively until … some spotted a bride being carried across the Plaza, and dragged one of our team members to pinch our camera and capture the moment! And there goes a potential journalist, we all smiled…The aim of this session was to invite kids to develop inquisitive minds, observe, and ask themselves and others questions- not that we have an issue with that…all the kids are quite able to fend for themselves!

We then followed up thanking Manuel with a little investigative activity to create around the ¨Afiche Cultural CT¨. As we mentioned last week the intention with this was to divvy up the crew in small groups, a dance, music, sports & outdoors and last but not least, an arts group. We had a selection of cuttings of low-cost events taking place in Quito over the coming weeks and the aim was for each group to choose those of interest in order to create a ¨Cuentamelo Todo Calendar¨ of the Month. Next week we will have the selected upcoming events posted, and the idea is for each of our kids to feel free to feed in weekly events/activities (for free or under US$2) that may have caught their attention. To our surprise, the kids were excited to hear about the Nutcracker (and what that actually was) in the Teatro Sucre, the free entry Christmas carols in the local churches, or the free exhibits at the water and science museums…During that time, Manuel, our star of the day, passed around the groups, and carried out a few interviews with the kids…What exactly was exchanged, we are not quite sure, and we will discover shortly as it turns out we were on air today…as we were on the Plaza with our Mobile Library (this is every Thursday) we actually missed it! …As soon as we get hold of the recordings, we´ll post the link…Fingers crossed on the outcome! ;0

To finish off yesterday´s session, some went off with the CEFA crew to play a game of touch volley on the plaza whilst the younger ones stayed under the carpa´s shade to draw microphones, cartoon celebrities and journalists interviewing people!

Next week we´ll be reverting back to story telling, a format we worked with in the initial months of the project, with the much-awaited return of Alfonso, known by the kids as Licenciado Vurro (which stands for Professor Donkey…). We expect he will be returning with an entertaining representation of "La maquina de cuando sea grande" by Mercedes Falconi to illustrate the right to choose...

How to relax…

2009-12-10T20:49:00.020-05:00

Yesterday was pretty informal. Maria Gabriela, alias Gaby, from the Defensoria del Pueblo, was with us to help the kids think about how and why it´s important to relax. One needs to understand one´s limits to be efficient and make the most of the choices and opportunities around us. By relaxing, you are making sure you give yourselves all these options.

Waiting for the kids to arrive, the session started out quite laid back (what a surprise!) with Gaby and a few of our early attendants (the same are often there before us tapping foot!) helping her blow the multicoloured balloons she had brought. Gradually, as the sun shone, kids streamed in under the tent and made themselves comfortable to read the book selection we had available. Our CEFA team accompanied them in the browsing. The more active ones went off to play volleyball on the plaza until Henri and Santi called them to do a few ice-breakers. During that time, we strolled around the plaza to invite the passing or sitting children with their parents- the idea is for the parents who could be wandering, spending a relaxing afternoon on the square or even working there with their kids, to know that we are here and that their children are cordially invited. In most cases, the kids happily joined us and now that we have set up tent next to the stairs on the plaza, their parents move closer and sit on the stairs to watch. Some also participate, sit with us and read or draw with their kids.
Gaby kicked off with a reminder of what rights are (let´s not forget the institution she works for seeks to help people, both children and adults, in protecting their rights!) and what comes with them. If you expect your rights to be respected then you also have to make sure that you fill in your part of the contract...As she pointed out, you have a right to education but you also have a responsibility to do your homework, otherwise your right is meaningless! So after she discussed with the kids what kind of rights they have- we actually happily observed they had a pretty comprehensive understanding of what these are- Gaby helped them pair the responsibilities to the rights they had pinpointed.
¨So what is the right to relax actually about?¨ she asked. Answers splashed out: ¨It´s about playing, sleeping, sitting down, being attentive to how you feel, dreaming, doing sports, having fun!¨ These answers were stimulated by a set of images she circulated amongst the group: Ratatouille nibbling on his piece of cheese, a group of chipmunks having a juice enjoying their time together, farmers taking a breath before moving on to their next task.
These images portrayed children, babies, adults, older people as well as animals to remind us all that we share this right. For each of these images, Gaby invited the kids to comment and describe what they saw and what it evoked to them. To each image was also attached a little description and as these were passed on around under the tent, and beyond (for the cooler ones! ;0), those who could read would inform the younger ones. The right to relax, Gaby stressed, is above all about knowing when to change activity: ¨So we can all change position and lie down now¨ threw one of our kids, to which all proceeded in sprawling out on the mats to relax and find the mental space to dream for a short while…

After this informal discussion and thanking Gaby for sharing her thoughts with us, Henri and Santi with the rest of the CEFA girls took over and invited the kids to play a last set of games before departing. During that time, the rest of us sat with those who were feeling quiet and relaxed enough to go back to books and drawings. At the end of the session, the balloons which we had secured to the San Francisco convent wall, were detached and distributed to the kids who happily wandered off with them...
Next week we´ll be looking at the right to information…for this we have to prepare a little as the challenge, beyond securing our ¨speaker¨(!), will be to get the kids in the side activities to work in groups on themes like dance, music, theatre, etc. and find out how and where they can source that information! The idea is also that some of our kids will volunteer to look out for this news weekly (according to their topic of choice of course!) and share it with the rest of the crew. The challenge: what´s on & where, for the cheapest possible, or for free! ;0
Keep on watching this space…

Reading life: education in practice

2009-12-05T23:28:00.005-05:00

Over the last couple of weeks, the Quito festivities have taken over the city somewhat getting in the way of our weekly activities! Canelasos, chivas, blaring musical bands on the city´s various corners, cuarenta competitions were all lively distractions that occupied many of Quito´s squares, including la Plaza San Francisco! … So apologies for our ¨silence radio¨ as it appears we are also a little delayed this week in posting this blog… as proper Quiteñans we too had to take part in these!! ;0

So the bad weather was back to strike us again this week- the rainy season pattern in this part of the hemisphere is straightforward: scorching sun in the morning and pouring rains in the afternoon- so we decided to take shelter in the Convent as soon as drops began to appear. One of us remained under the tent on the Plaza to ensure that parents & newcomers would know where to find us. The rest of the crew went straight to the Convent’s patio.

This week, we covered the right to education. The idea was to demonstrate that learning is primarily about being attentive to what is around you, about reading life from where your life experiences make you stand. Fe y Alegria´s (FyA) believes in popular education and its Pedagogy team was present to unravel this approach to the kids. The idea behind FyA going ahead with us on this project was primarily because it provides them with an opportunity to take popular education out of the schoolroom to the streets, test their methodologies and eventually, on a longer term, to reapply these learning back into their schools.

On Wednesday, FyA’s voluntary students (CEFA) also expanded Cuentamelo Todo´s team. Thanks to Henri & Santi, two wonderful students who have been involved with us since we started, a troop of CEFA girls are now mobilized to support the project over the next 6 months. Their mission: ensure the kids make the most of our sessions from a recreational perspective, supporting the values and rights we are working on.

So going back to the right to education, the CEFA team allowed us to make concrete to the kids the fact that education is also about learning from everything that surround us... Indeed, Henri, our first little “cefista” represented the self, explaining to the kids how and what he could learn about and from himself. Fernanda embodied people and revealed how diversity can enrich our lives. Santi, impersonifying the environment, talked about what nature, monuments, and/or contexts bring to us. Finally Carla, concluded on how life, beliefs, dreams and aspirations can make us grow as a person.

A relaxed discussion and sharing of experiences then took place between the kids and Christian and Lorena, FyA’s pedagogues. As you will no doubt notice from the pictures, the session was pretty reflective...maybe this had something to do with the context we were in! ;0

We then moved on to lighter topics and took to the plaza to see what had happened to our Coca Cola experiment from the previous two weeks (Some food for thought). All the kids were very keen to see what had occurred to the chocho (corn) we had said goodbye to along with the coins and a small rock. The experiment did not quite turn out as expected as the chocho looked the same as when it had left us (ok, a little diminished but nothing drastic enough to put the kids off sweet drinks!), the coins were much cleaner (which to our despair, the kids thought was rather cool..) and the stone, well, it remained of stone! Despite the slight flop which we all laughed about, the CEFA team then gathered the troops to carry out some last games, whilst the younger and more ¨quiet¨ ones stayed on with some of us to do a little reading and drawing.

Next week, as rights are not all about serious matters, we´ll be looking thanks to the Defensoria del Pueblo at the right to relax. Indeed, as human beings we have a right to eat well, sleep, learn but also to stay healthy, play, dream, and relax!

Some food for thought

2009-11-20T09:07:00.017-05:00

This week's session was a little unusual, between the grey clouds, sporadic rains and few children, we decided to challenge the skies and to stay out on the Plaza. Geoconda and Gladys from the UMSC were back with some of last week' s puppets introducing a few of their follows such as a beetroot, yucca, and a carrot… Because, as they had pointed out at length last week (On the importance of hand washing- and beyond), part of taking care of yourself and being healthy, is about eating well.

We waited patiently for our kids, some of which were busy finishing off their homework, dropped by those we knew to remind them that Jerome, the French chef who also runs a renowned restaurant in Quito(http://www.chezjeromerestaurante.com/), would be sharing a few cooking tips with us… Except it took him a little longer than expected to get there but we´ll cover that later! ;0

So Geoconda and Gladys today chose to sit in a circle and engineer their puppets openly sharing with the kids the virtues of some key foods…such as beans and pees, along with bananas and oranges…With the kids, we understood many things, such as how when you don´t have meat, beans also have the power to bring you the same vital proteins, if not more.
After that, we played a few games, and set out for an experiment that we hope to draw sensible conclusions: we said goodbye to a few coins and a few beans left over from our appetizers with the puppets to a Coca Cola drink… Next week, we will observe what happened to them all…pure sugar in practice. The idea behind this exercise, along with many others that day, was for the kids to understand that with a certain amount of money you can choose to drink a coke but also elect to have water, purchase an ice cream but for the same price buy a bag of beans, which will help you feel better, stronger and most importantly, will be more nutritious.

These notions of choice, taste and health were reinforced by Jerome... who finally made it- Quito can be difficult city to travel through in times of pouring rain and demonstrations…;0 After having sought shelter in the Covento San Franscisco during the hard rain where we carried on playing a few games, the Tianguez Café invited us for an oats drink… Ok, the real secret was that once Jerome had unveiled how to cook ùp his scrumptious menu on the Plaza, the kids would be having a little tasting session in the café! As things never go as planned, we were there before the chef, the menu, and very close to not having any tasting…

Despite the fact we were well past the end of the session though, all the kids were game and stayed on to listen to this person who had elected the strange profession of sharing his passion for food by preparing balanced meals using unusual greens that grow by side roads, like thistle for example! That was on our menu, along with quinoa balls and marinated tomatoes and a simple strawberry salad - all affordable goods from the local market &/or store.

So Jerome displayed his platters and ingredients to the kids, asking them what they eat and how they or their parents prepare meals…After sharing with them the benefits of some of these in both sight and taste and ensuring we know how to prepare these sensibly (rinsing, changing cooking oil regularly, diversifying ingredients, etc.), we then launched into the proper ¨dégustation¨. The kids devoured, some liked, some knew, others tried and burnt their tongues but all made up a mind of their own and understood what they were eating, what good it could bring them and how simple it was to make it so.

Next week we will move on, thanks to our team of Fe y Alegria pedagogists, to what is the right to education. Lorena & Christian will share with the kids what is education beyond that of a schoolroom and how experience and learning are to be found in our daily activities…as, at the end of the day, it is all about being in-tune with what surrounds you and reading life.

Keep on watching this space…

On the importance of hand washing – and beyond!

2009-11-12T22:46:00.010-05:00

Our special guests this week were puppets brought in by Geoconda and Gladys from the Unidad Municipal de Salud Centro (UMSC), one of Quito's main public medical institutions.

It was a very animated meeting with plenty of interaction between the puppets and the kids while talking about health issues.

The doctor and nurse puppets gave children advice on how to stay healthy – by eating plenty of fruit and vegetables, washing hands often, exercising and making sure to rest when needed. They told them that if they are sick and need to see a doctor, there are places, such as the UMSC, where one can be seen for free.

But it's not all about eating well and washing one's hands - the puppets also reminded the children that it's important to receive affection from one's parents, and emotional health is as important as physical health in order to be and stay well.

The mother and children puppets talked about how important it is to be healthy – if you are ill, how can you go to school and study, let alone play with your friends? They also talked about the responsibility each of one of us has to take care of ourselves and to let others know if we're not well, so that someone can help us get better.

To finish up the puppet show, Geoconda and Gladys invited some of the children behind the screen to operate the puppets themselves. That's when it was obvious that they had all been listening very attentively! They got their puppets to ask questions to the rest of the audience and each of them improvised a final bit of advice to end the show.

The last one was the youngest puppet, Jonatan who said: “Take care of yourselves, children, health first!” Message received!

At the end of the meeting, Monica, the Cuéntamelo Todo social worker, reminded the children that we work as a platform, and if they or their parents are unsure who to talk to if they are unwell, they can talk to us and we can refer them to the right institutions.

Next week, the UMSC will be back with new puppets, this time, vegetables…to talk about the importance of eating well. They will be supported by Jerome, a leading French chef, who will be revealing to our kids what great meals you can whip up with a few affordable healthy ingredients…Keep on watching this space!

What it means to be living: the right to life

2009-11-06T07:47:00.017-05:00

After last week’s general introductory session on human rights with the Defensoria del Pueblo, puppets and paintings this week allowed us to creatively loom into the fundamental right to life.

Christian and Lorena from the Cuéntamelo Todo team started up the session with their key guests, puppets Pancho and Lulu, meeting up in downtown Quito. Pancho counted to Lulu how the previous week he was walking through the plaza and he had come across a gathering of kids being informed about their right to life (Let´s talk about rights). Were some of those children present that day and did they recollect what had been said? Everyone is a unique human being, has the right to be alive and most importantly, should value life. As every other right, it comes with obligations, so we, as human beings, have the duty to respect other living beings. Dogs, like trees and flowers for example, should also be taken care of, said Lulu.

Miguel Yanez, the artist who was with us a few weeks ago (Freedom at the tip of a finger), joined the kids to guide them in depicting this right with the tip of their own finger...Many remembered his technique, and for those who didn't, he revealed it again! Miguel then invited them to illustrate the puppet story.

Following the creative spree and with the help of the kids, he then selected a number of paintings to build a new story based around the right to life and values supporting it. He started with a painting of a sad-looking face and asked the children why it had such an expression. A girl spotted the following painting, that of a flower, and suggested it was because the flower had been cut and was withering. And the story went on ...further unwrapping to the kids why it is important to value life.

Next week, the Unidad Municipal de Salud Centro, one of Quito’s main public medical institutions, more puppets will join us to pursue this journey on rights and introduce us to the world of health.

Following the creative spree and with the help of the children, he then selected a number of paintings to build a new story based on the right to life and the values supporting it. He started with a painting of a sad-looking face and asked the kids why it had such an expression. A little girl spotted the following painting, that of a flower, and suggested it was because the flower had been cut and was withering. And the story went on...further unwrapping to the kids why it is important to value life.

Next week, thanks to the Unidad Municipal de Salud Centro (UMSC), one of Quito's main public medical institutions, more puppets will be joining us to pursue this journey on rights and introduce us to the world of health.

Let's talk about rights

2009-10-28T20:09:00.013-05:00

Group work in action...
what are our rights exactly & what should we expect for and from ourselves?

Today we introduced the concept of human rights to our kids with the help of Alexandra Arroyo from the Defensoria del Pueblo. This is a government-appointed body aimed at supervising the respect of human rights in Ecuador, which basically means they provide free legal advise to all people, young and old, to help understand and safeguard their rights. For more information, check out their website http://www.defensordelpueblo.gov.ec/

Alexandra did a great job at explaining challenging concepts through both games and examples. She put together a tic-tac-toe activity where she asked children to put crosses over concepts that did not follow the idea of rights. For example, she asked whether it was true that the interests of adults come before those of kids, to which the children responded unanimously that it wasn't. And there went our first cross!

She then used hangman to spell out the word priority and explained what it meant that children's rights are a priority in society. Children, like the elderly and pregnant women, have priority to sit on buses, she said. And if a boat sinks, children also go first.

We thought it would be harder to tackle these concepts with our kids, but the response was actually really positive. The children identified many of their rights – the right to education, the right to play, the right to life, the right to health care. They also understood their right to protection and recognized different types of violence that one can be a victim of. Alexandra further informed the kids about who to talk to should they be, or know of, victims of psychological, physical, sexual or institutional violence.

This session introduced the concept of rights and what comes with them, namely responsibilities and obligations, to both oneself and society. From now on Cuéntamelo Todo will unravel the variety of rights children have, as human beings and citizens of this world, with a range of partner institutions. We start next week with the right to life. The Defensoria del Pueblo will also be back to explore some of these with our kids, such as the right to dream ...

Freedom at the tip of a finger...

2009-10-23T10:40:00.016-05:00

With the tip of a thumb appears a fish, a dog, a cyclist,
a house ....an entire new world

This week we invited Miguel Yanez, a local Ecuadorian artist, to come and share his painting technique with the children. He dipped a finger in paint and showed them how easily one can sketch a dog, a fish or a man. The kids listened attentively and all poured together onto a big board, excited about having their own go.

One big theme we are working on is solidarity, and we saw it in action when the kids all painted together on the board under Miguel's guidance – with some of the older ones showing the younger ones how to sketch.

The greatest commotion came when we handed out individual small canvasses we had prepared for them out of cardboard.

Paula drew a house with a tree, Divina small blue flowers, Leo spread a thick layer of paint on the canvas with his whole hand, while Ana used the colours to write down the name of her favourite band – Linkin Park.

The initial plan was to create a story from their drawings based on the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which includes the ideas of equality, freedom and solidarity. But as the sky rumbled on into its winter season and the children kept asking for more canvasses, we decided to take up Miguel's offer to follow up with the stories in a forthcoming session. If you want to find out about Miguel's work, check out his website: http://www.miguelyanez.com

Next week, the Defensoria del Pueblo, a leading Ecuadorian human rights institution, will be introducing the concept of rights to our kids: what is a right, what it represents for a child and the responsibilities that go hand in hand with it.

...Keep on watching this space!

Cuentamelo Todo ...

2009-10-20T22:29:00.005-05:00

The Cuentamelo Todo team

Plaza San Francisco is historically Ecuador's market place – already before the Spanish arrived, people from the Pacific coast, the Andes and the Amazons gathered in this part of Quito to trade their goods. Though no official market is currently held here, the plaza continues to be a hub of activity. Every day formal and informal vendors share this space with tourists, shoe shiners and plenty of pigeons under the shadow of the Franciscan complex.

Many of the faces one sees here belong to children. Some polish shoes, busk, sell ice creams and sweets. Others are here because their parents work in the plaza. Some go to school, others don't. Some have a home to go back to and others don't. It is these kids that we, Cuentamelo Todo's team, come to meet every Wednesday and Thursday.

The idea is to engage with them and create new opportunities from the street, their known space. To give them a chance to play together, read and paint but also to talk about their rights as children.

We do so by bringing over books for them to read, by telling and enacting stories with them, and by giving them tools to play.

There is also another key element to our project. Cuentamelo Todo effectively works as a platform, linking the kids and their families with institutions matching their needs – be it shelter, food, education, health care or legal counseling.

We'll be updating this blog weekly after our meetings, so watch this space ...

We´ll be with you shortly...

2009-10-12T21:27:00.001-05:00

Plaza San Francisco, Quito, Ecuador

This is a little snapshot of one of our encuentros in La Plaza San Francisco where our Fe y Alegría colleagues performed ¨Le Petit Prince¨ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The kids loved our Petit Prince´s fluorescent green hair, our wolf-shedding-into-snake and our king turning into lead singer...

This was also an opportunity to explore key life values such as respect and friendship through a variety of recreational activities like group singing and the essential footy...to much of the old ladies and tourists´distress...;-0