Reduce Work Hours for Ecuador's Street Children

The year 2016 was a great success at UBECI and we’ve been working hard since January to ensure that we can continue our amazing work here in Quito! We are extremely grateful that we can count on the help of regular donors; we couldn’t do it without you.

This ongoing support has enabled us to reach over 600 children and their families living through the hardship of Quito’s markets day in and day out. The main foci for the January-February period have been leadership and self-esteem, two very important themes for children who often lack opportunities to develop their social skills in a structured environment and who are too often required to grow up quicker than they should have to.

As part of our market workshops, songs are regularly used to reinforce the children’s confidence and self-esteem, encouraging them to be part of the group and to express themselves. The picture above is a great example of this, with our amazing staff member Javier in action, doing what he does best!

The UBECI staff also conducts regular evaluations in order to assess the children’s progress. This is not only a great indicator of the impact our work can have, but also helps our staff evaluate what skills they should focus on in their future workshops.

Here is a photo of the adorable Genesis, one of the many children attending UBECI’s workshops in the markets. In the photo, she is completing an evaluation to assess her progress in the bi-monthly period of January-February. It looks like she is doing some wonderful work and having a great time!

We are now in March and the month’s focus will be education. Again, what an important theme for this group of children, as some of them only go to school irregularly or perhaps not at all. Last year, 24% of the children who attended UBECI’s workshops did not attend school. We certainly hope that our work and support will contribute to reducing this number, and our ultimate dream is of course to see all those children attending school on a regular basis!

March has also been a great occasion to celebrate International Women’s Day which took place on the 8^th of March. As over half of the children we work with through our Play, Do and Learn project are girls, we thought this was the perfect opportunity to bring awareness to their situation and reach out to the UBECI family all over the globe. Here’s a photo of one of our wonderful volunteers, Joni from Australia, having a cheeky laugh with the girls in the market.

Thank you again to everyone for your precious help and support. Please note that we’ve got some very exciting campaigns coming up for 2017, we’ll make sure to keep you posted!