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