Hi! I am Paula and I have been here for a month (since 19/01/2022) in Okakarara. 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. That makes me feel very comfortable here. I also really enjoy the project.
Because we work with children and young people between the ages of 0 and 19, there is a great variety of ideas and activities that we can implement in the project. So far, that is what I like most. Any idea you have can somehow be incorporated into everyday life.
At 8:00 in the morning sports with the young children up to preschool age are on the agenda. They dance to songs, jump, balance, play tag and imitate animals. Every day a different group takes part.
When it's between nine and half past nine it is breakfast time for the children, and the three of us volunteers can take a little time to tidy up or plan. Recently we received a large book donation. Last week we spent sorting it into age groups, labelling it by different categories and entering it into lists. As I was ill recently and still not fully recovered, that was my job even during sports. After breakfast, most of the children have free time to play. When we find 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 then they could run barefoot over the paper.
For the preschool we are currently restarting the programme Mousebook :
Every other morning we work with the preschool children on, recognising patterns and sequences in order to later find a relationship to numbers . We started the whole thing this week and I find it really exciting to work with the children and teachers and try out new things.
The rest of the morning we use to prepare our programme for the After-school-care (ASC) preparation. After lunch, the schoolchildren come for homework supervision. We are responsible for the pupils from Year 5 onwards. While one half does their homework, we give the other half tasks we have prepared ourselves. They can work on their 1×1 driving licence 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 for them, sometimes the children can pick something themselves. After tidying up, there is then the popular CookieTime. Each child has the chance to score two cookies if they solve the mental arithmetic problems we set correctly. That is always a very funny ending.
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. While browsing around, even more ideas come to mind about how the children’s day-to-day life could be shaped. It’s just enormous fun. I already knew beforehand that there is a lot of scope for creativity in the project, but I am still surprised by the many different directions you can think in here.
Alongside the supervision, we have been divided up for the projects Game preparation, Guest House and Sewing . I am responsible for the latter. At the moment, a lot of it is also about design: the so-called showroom, where the sewn products are presented, has to be refurnished and restocked. Right at the start, the to-do list seems enormous. But getting through it is great fun, because, for example, I can design the price tags myself or arrange the products according to my own ideas. Afterwards, exact bookkeeping has to be done, noting how many products are still there and what has been sold. Writing down the strict numbers is a nice change of pace now and then. With all the projects, we keep having to coordinate with each other, with the other teachers and with Sonja.
In my opinion, the collaboration works really well, so planning and developing things together is a great support. That is because of the Language barrier also super important. The nursery children can hardly speak English and it’s still a bit difficult with some of the schoolchildren too. This sometimes makes it quite hard to build a bond with the children and to 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’m super happy with the project. It’s very varied and everyday life remains diverse. I’m already excited to see what kind of development we can observe in the children and in ourselves by the end of our stay!
Dear Paula, how wonderful that you are at steps for children in Okakarara and are making a valuable, sustainable contribution with your work on site. We thank you very sincerely for your commitment as a volunteer!
