New Children's Club at 'The Mountain'

We are now a month into our new children's club at 'The Mountain' and we have been really pleased with how it has gone. The club runs each afternoon Tuesday-Friday with an average of 20-30 kids each day. The age range is rather large - 2 year olds to 13 year olds - but there is a core of 6-10 year olds so we focus more on that age group in our planning. Those with homework bring that along to do and we give help where needed. If they don't bring homework, or when they have finished, we have various art and craft activities available, and then we do half an hour of games and songs to teach English at the end. It's been nice to see lots of children both at the club and in the street wearing the jumpers that we gave out a few weeks ago.


Many of the children come from homes where their parents are not there to care for them much - they work long hours and some have alcohol problems. We have one little family of 5 where the eldest girl, Marycielo, 11, is looking after the younger four. We have another little girl, Maricarmen, who sometimes leaves early from the club because she looks after her elderly grandmother while the rest of the family are at work or school. She says to us that her granny often cries and she has to go back and see her. Maricarmen is 5.


The club is staffed by volunteers from a couple of language/volunteering organisations in Cusco. This is a great opportunity for the volunteers to be able to work with disadvantaged kids in a structured and supportive setting, and the kids love to have the volunteers with them, but it does have it's challenges as I try to co-ordinate things! Volunteers come for anything between a week and a month or more, some with experience of working with children and some not, and with varying amounts of Spanish! It was the idea of our Pastors, Americo and Mary, to work with overseas volunteers on the project, and I have really 'inherited' what they started in March. I also enjoy working with the volunteers but my biggest challenge at the moment is making sure I have 3 or more people to staff the club every week. I could do with a couple of more permanent staff really, either foreigners or Peruvians who live here, so I'm looking into how I could recruit local volunteers.


We're also trying to get funding together to finish the room where we meet as it's really in a rough state. We have some good tables and chairs, bought by the volunteers that came in March, but the floor is just mud which restricts what we do, particularly with the younger ones. I'd love to get some proper pre-school games and equipment and focus more on the younger ones who are a really neglected age group here in poor communities.




The Pastors are continuing to look into funding for the lunch programme that they want to start too, which, if successful, would certainly lead to a large increase in kids wanting to come to the afternoon club. We need to put in the kitchen first and equip the dining room, so that project is probably still a while away.