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

…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...

... 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...

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