One of our projects is in a place called Coporaque which is 3 hours away by bus up in the Colca Canyon. Up until last weekend there has been a project on Saturdays where the older kids were learning how to make a newspaper by writing articles and taking photos. The paper should be ready this week and the plan is to give it to the kids from San Isidro and Salinas to read about the goings on of their fellow Intiwawa students in Coporaque.
It is a very important component of Intiwawa for all the kids from all the places to learn about each others cultures and different living conditions.
For example in Coporaque we are currently working out of a cement classroom with no desks or chairs or a whiteboard so we have to improvise our lessons a lot more than in San Isidro and Salinas.
But we have recently bought a printer mainly to make copies and also posters to decorate the walls so it's looking nicer than it was. And next week hopefully we will have a whiteboard!
Also we have added some temporary tables which has made teaching English on Sundays much easier!
The older kids can now introduce themselves (name, age, country and favourite colour) in English which is so great and hopefully by the end of next week they will be able to talk about their family and their house.
Coporaque is a beautiful place and hopefully the kids can use knowledge gained from Intiwawa to improve their lives!
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Monday, July 1, 2013
Yo Quiero Ser...
“Yo quiero
ser”, es el sueño de que tienen nuestros
niños en Intiwawa. Cuando un niño sueña comienza a cambiar el mundo, comienza a transformarlo todo. Puede dibujar
con un pincel un futuro mejor para él y su familia; puede con una pelota de fútbol, ganarle a la
pobreza; puede desde una computadora programar un futuro mejor, escribir un final feliz para su comunidad, o
con una escoba barrer el desinterés de la sociedad. No importa que herramienta
elija, lo importante es que tenga ganas
de soñar.
“Yo quiero ser”
es una frase llena de entusiasmo, de vitalidad, decisión. Ayudar a la
realización de este sueño es una de las más nobles tareas que podamos hacer.
Todos los niños sueñan, algunos en silencio; tal vez los problemas apagaron ese
sueño, quizás se sienten incapaces de realizarlo, pero cada niño guarda un deseo, un sueño en el corazón. Una sonrisa, un
abrazo, a veces una palabra es
suficiente para darle fuerza y futuro a esos sueños escondidos y debilitados.
No perdamos la oportunidad de ayudar a los niños a realizar sus sueños. Es
hermoso cuando ese “Yo quiero ser” se convierte en “Yo soy” y es triste cuando
por el desinterés o el desgano se
convierte en un “Yo quise ser”
De Alex Farfán
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Weekends with Intiwawa, by Astrid Soufflay
One of the advantages of volunteering for INTIWAWA is that it gives the opportunity to get out of the city to take part in one of the sides projects in either Coporaque or Salinas.
Luckily for me, I have been to both.
Salinas is located about two hours from Arequipa itself. It is an isolated, preserved little town whose name comes from the gorgeous saltflats.
The idea of the weekend project is to allow the children to have interaction with other cultures as well as some English lessons whilst also allowing the volunteers to see something different from the very european Arequipa.
Therefore, two weeks ago, Sophie (the other frenchie from Intiwawa) and I accompanied Juan Jose and Angelo, the peruvian volunteers in charge of the project out to Salinas. I got up that sunday at 5.30 am to get on the 7am bus to the small village. Two hours later, there we were ready to rock that classroom.
As it turned out, we needn´t dread anything, the kids from 4 to 14 are some of the most enthuastic, knowledge-hungry children I have ever met. Our two hour program was finished in about 30 minutes which meant improvisation most of the time.
After singing several "good morning" songs and having improvised a game going through most kitchen appliances in English, we finally gave the stage to Juan Jose and Angelo who talked about important values, such as punctuality, honesty and respect. After that, while the boys were teaching the kids some games, I took the opportunity to help the mothers, who cook lunch every Sunday. While preparing the food , they taught me some Quechua and laughed a bit at my french accent but also talked about their children and what they wished for them. They asked for simple things like a dictionary or maps for school, mentioning that the teacher had to draw one because there was none available.
Even after all this, there was still a little time for us to walk around and discover the gorgeous saltflats, where I fell disgracefully, stupidly attempted to actually eat salt and got terrified by the many alpacas around. All in all, a great sunday which managed to make me fall in love with the idea of the weekend projects.
The following weekend I got myself in the tricky situation of committing to two week end projects. First Coporoque on Friday and Saturday and then Salinas again on Sunday. As it happened it was the 156th anniversary of Coporaque to which the mayor of the city had nicely invited the Intiwawa team. We were to take part in the official desfiles and I was not going to miss that for the world.
After admiring condors and then almost dying of sheer phyisical pain walking up the Colca Canyon, my fellow volunteer Katie and I showed up to Coporaque exhausted but enthusastic. The following two days would be musical and colourful, dominated by local dances and some of the prettiest dresses and costumes I had seen in my life.
All of the children were happy to take part in our desfile and seemed genuinely interested when we talked to them about the new project our coordinators Kerryn and David are putting forward to give secondary school kids artistic and physical activities on Saturdays. This project is a welcomed addition to the Sunday programs which are similar to those ran in Salinas and will notably feature photgraphy classes, for which we are still trying to fundraise.
To learn more about this specific project : http://camerasforcoporaque.
By Astrid Soufflay
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