Hi! I’m Paula and I have been in Okakarara for a month (since 19.01.2022). Together with Julius and Johanna, my fellow volunteers, I will be working at steps for children in Okakarara for the next six months. Okakarara is a very cosy place. People greet you in the street and ask how you are. This makes me feel very comfortable here. I also enjoy the project a lot.
Because we work with children and young people between 0 and 19 years old, a great variety of ideas and activities arises that we can implement in the project. That is what I like most so far. Somehow, every idea you have can be incorporated into everyday life.
At 8:00 a.m. in the morning, it is time for sports with the young children up to preschool age. They dance to songs, hop, balance, play tag and imitate animals. A different group takes its turn every day.
When it is breakfast time for the children between nine and 9:30 , the three of us volunteers can take a little time to tidy up or plan. We recently received a large donation of books. We spent last week sorting them by age group, labelling them according to different categories and entering them into lists. Since I was recently ill and am still not completely fit again, this was already my activity during sports. After breakfast, most of the children have free time to play. When we have the time, we do art with a group. My favourite project so far was when we painted the children’s feet in bright colours and they were then able to run barefoot across the paper.
We are currently introducing the Mousebook program to the preschool again:
Every other morning, we work with the preschool children on recognizing patterns and sequences in order to develop a sense of numbers later on. We started the whole thing this week and I find it really exciting to work together with the children and teachers and try out new things.
We use the rest of the morning to prepare our program for After-school-care (ASC) . After the lunch break, the schoolchildren come for homework supervision. We are responsible for students from the 5th grade onward. While one half does their homework, we give the other half assignments that we have prepared. They can earn their 1×1 license or write an essay about where they see themselves in 20 years.
When everyone has finished their tasks, we play together. Sometimes we choose a game, and sometimes the children are allowed to choose something themselves. After tidying up, we finish with the popular CookieTime. Each child has the opportunity to get two cookies if they solve the mental arithmetic problems we set correctly. It is always a very fun way to end.
Right from the first few days, we were given a great deal of creative freedom. We worked out many things ourselves, with tips from former volunteers. Browsing around gives us even more ideas about how we could structure everyday life for the children. It is simply so much fun. I already knew beforehand that the project offered a lot of room for creativity, but I am still surprised by how many different directions you can think in here.
In addition to childcare, we divided ourselves among the projects Game Preparation, Guest House and Sewing. I am responsible for the latter. At the moment, this also involves a lot of designing: the so-called showroom, where the sewn products are presented, needs to be refitted and restocked. Especially at the beginning, the to-do list seems huge. However, working through it is a lot of fun because, for example, I can design the price tags myself or arrange the products according to my own ideas. After that, we have to keep precise records of how many products are left and what has been sold. Keeping strict records of the numbers is a nice change in between. With all the projects, we always have to coordinate with one another, the other teachers and Sonja.
In my opinion, the collaboration works really well, so planning and developing things together is a great support. This is also extremely important because of the language barrier. The kindergarten children can hardly speak any English, and some of the schoolchildren still struggle with it too. As a result, it is sometimes not easy at all to build a relationship with the children and break the ice. However, there is always a teacher nearby to support us, and step by step we can gain access to the children. Overall, I am very happy with the project. It is very diverse, and everyday life remains varied. I am already excited to see what kind of development we will be able to observe in the children and in ourselves at the end of our stay!
Dear Paula, it is wonderful that you are at steps for children in Okakarara and making a valuable, sustainable contribution through your work there. We would like to sincerely thank you for your commitment as a volunteer!
