#ibmcsc
In the last couple of years, the local council donated some land to the Foundation in the North of the city, in one of the lower socio economic regions of the city. (Many of the outer suburbs of Salta are lower socio economic). And they raised money to build their own dedicated building.
Although we’d briefly seen the building on Monday on our way to lunch, Tuesday the 6th was the first time we saw the place will all the children.
The children were all very excited to see us, although, we also disappointed them a bit given that we were the first international ‘volunteers’ to come to the foundation who weren’t actually there to hang out with them.
During our time here though, we have managed to sneak our breaks out in the yard with the children where they are all very excited to talk to us (until they get frustrated with my confused looks due to my lack of Spanish). And then they tended to flock to my Japanese team mate Shiori who is quite fluent in Spanish.
Between Shiori, Stefanie and myself, we all brought various educational gifts for the children. Many of whom have never even been outside of Salta.
Rather than have the children ‘expect’ gifts from all the international visitors to the foundation, we instead set up a lottery with the children. One designed to teach them English at the same time.
With the children allocated numbers, we one by one call out the english number e.g. “Thirteen” and they can come forward and select from our random assortment of toys, books and other random assortments.
Even at their age, I was quite impressed by their English skills!
Philip Nye 