A world-full of choices…

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...

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...