Today was my second day working at Granitos de Paz, the foundation that Children Beyond our Borders partners with here in Cartagena, Colombia. The situation is a bit different this year, we are no longer working at the foundation itself, but rather a public school down the street in an empty double classroom.
Yesterday we held the geography workshop that my group has been working on throughout the semester. The goal of the workshop was intended to drive home a basic concept of globalization, or what we explain to the children as an “international society.” We focus on countries, travel, products, Shakira, etc.
Our project to build a library has been changed around as we were told there was an issue with the location. However, a building with AC is currently underway near the foundation, which will have shelves to house the books we have brought, and hopefully more in the future.
I arrived a week late, but I heard from the other volunteers that the reading workshop went extremely well the other day, which I expected as it was a hit last year. Probably out of all of the activities we did reading one on one or in very small groups for 20-30 minutes a day showed the most immediate and noticeable progress among the kids.
Many of them children who I know from our program this past year, but there are some new members as well. Something remarkable that I found out was that the foundation started a milk program, where people from the neighborhood can come to get fresh milk in the morning. This program had previously existed but only for those with children under five. The computer lab has also been updated since last year, and the internet is faster.