Education and volunteers getting their groove-on in Perú!

Life is Arequipa is going fantastically! It’s been an extremely hectic period as we’ve started the new academic year with a lot of new children at Triunfo & Maldonado, and of course we started working in Canocota near Chivay, and will soon be starting to work in Ampi as well!

There have been a lot of comings and goings (with the odd water fight & BBQ), but every volunteer has played such an important role in the continued success of GVI Phoenix Peru – thank you.

We sadly had to say goodbye to our Intern Mari, we thank you for all your fantastic work and support at Maldonado & Triunfo, you’re hugely missed. We’ve said hello to Kate Cochran who at the end of her 6 month combo scheme with GVI has stayed with us in Arequipa to Intern for a few months, yey!!!

They’ve faced a number of challenges incl. the complete painting and decorating of Maldonado (46 children now) which lead to the vols having to teach all 6 grades in 1 classroom with no tables or chairs!! We now have a kitchen at Maldonado which is so much better & safer than cooking in the upstairs class room!

There’s also been a lot of maintenance at Triunfo (58 children), there are now stairs rather than having to scramble up and down the rubble, and outside the kitchen is now a safer and less boggy area!

There are now 22 children in grades 1 & 2 at Triunfo, which as you can imagine is.....chaotic! The vols have been working extremely hard, as a lot of the children have never received any form of education prior to this.

We’ve also introduced a performance scheme in order to try and improve their behaviour (the children not the vols, but now you come to think of it...). We also held a parents meeting to discuss their children’s behaviour in the class, it went really well with a lot of very supportive parents participating.

Last year we saw a real increase at Maldonado in the children’s interest in dancing, with them winning their first ever trophy this January at the communities 14th anniversary.

We’ve therefore started dance lessons for all grades. Wendy (Carmen from the Inicial’s sister) comes 4 times a week to give dance lessons, and on Fridays to assist the volunteers with the Physical Education lessons. It’s going really well, and the children love it. The odd vol has also been spotted getting their groove on!

The English lessons have been going really well, this will be the first full year we’ll be working using our Curriculum we put together the end of last year. The Inicial’s are already demonstrating their knowledge of colours by running to the correct coloured table when instructed, and thanks to the vols beautiful renditions of Heads, Shoulders, Knees & Toes, the children are pretty clued up their body parts as well!

The vols have been doing an ongoing art project with the children at both schools, using salt dough the children have been making a gift for their Mum’s for Mothers Day, this way every child will have a gift to give on Mothers Day.

We’re warming up for Maldonado´s 12th anniversary with competitions. We just had the singing competition which was judged by Leah, Carmen & Kate. Alfredo & Daniela won, with Edyluz winning the adults section (Carla: although I do think mine & Tufan’s duet to the Titanic theme tune was overlooked as a winning choice!). We also had a sports day with water balloon catching, relays, sack races, eating competition potato & spoon races!

Education and volunteers getting their groove-on in Perú!