Reduce Work Hours for Ecuador's Street Children

UBECI has had a fantastic summer, with a huge number of volunteers taking part in both the Street Children Project and Administrative support. Since our last report we began our Summer Program which stretches from July to August. During this period we help the children develop their artistic skills through dance, theater and drawing. Workshops were designed for each age group to develop the skills appropriate for their stage of cognitive development.

As with other UBECI campaigns, play is extremely important in the cognitve and social development of the children. Therefore physical games were incorporated into playtime, such as football and skipping, to develop skills in teamwork and leadership. These activities also allow the children to relax, unwind and enjoy their time away from work. 

During the Summer Program, songs were included at the end of each workshop. A variety of songs were used to teach coordination and to capture the children's attention. These songs were designed to be entertainig and educational, with the final goodbye song incorporating English words for the children to learn. These summer workshops were hugely sucessful and reached a large number of children. During this summer period we saw up to 40 children in attendence of our activites in one day at the largest market UBECI works at in South Quito. We were lucky enough to have atleast 10 full and part-time volunteers working in the markets each week, allowing for more attention to be given to the children's learning.

We have just recently ended our Summer Program and we are very excited to have begun our School Kit Campaign. As millions of children across the globe go back to school in September, we here at UBECI hope to provide the children in South Quito with the same opportunity to learn and develop. We found last year that less than 24% of the children who took part in our workshops attended school. Therefore we have been collecting donations of school supplies such as pens, pencils and notebooks to give to the children. We will be trying to get all of the UBECI niños school kits to emphasize the importance of academic learning as well as giving them and their parents the means to actually attend school. Donations for our School Kit Campaign will benefit over 300 children across South Quito. 

So what's next for UBECI? From September to October UBECI will be reinforcing educational activities such as math and reading games. The street children lack self-esteem in comparison to their counterparts so UBECI will teach the street children to value themselves as individuals, an important asset in order to succeed in school. 

With a busy few months coming up, UBECI are hugely grateful for all your support and donations! Your generosity enables us to keep improving our work and to increase the number of children we reach through our workshops. On behalf of all the staff at UBECI and the street children in South Quito - we say thank you!