Felices fiestas

¡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...

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 ....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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!