Sponsor's update from Ricuarte, Ecuador

Child sponsorship update from the SOS Children's Village Ricuarte, Ecuador from November 2007.

Dear Sponsors

We’re very happy to greet you again from Ricaurte, in Cuenca - Ecuador. This letter’s purpose is to tell you a short summary of the things that happened during this year in our SOS Children’s Village. Now the village is composed by 72 boys, girls and adolescents and in the SOS Youth Facilities there are 8 boys and 3 girls. This year arrived to the village three children and soon we’ll welcome seven more.

Now in our village two sisters have meet together…after three years of separation. Yamara has gotten adapted easily to the village, to her mommy Marilú and to her 4 sisters and 3 brothers. Her reunion with her sister Tatiana was very affective and with a lot of happiness. Tatiana welcomed Yamara - her little sister - with a lot of affection. Now they’re also very good friends.

The youth of our facilities are fine and they continue striving a lot in their education and acquiring experience while they work and at the same time they’re able to earn money and to learn to save it for the future. Also with these part-time jobs they are integrated to the community and they get new skills which will help them a lot by the time they lead independent. Their village family guide them in the process to search and get a job to help them to have good oportunities in the area they would like to get their future professions.

Celebrations at Ricuarte, Ecuador

During this year we’ve had some celebrations. On March, in a very special event 9 boys and girls from our village received the baptism. We made a party with all the village community’s participation. The moms and siblings of these nine children were very happy to celebrate this special ceremony. On May were inaugurated the sport journeys in our village and all our children participated on behalf of all their families, each team wore nice uniforms and had a pretty queen. They showed a lot of emotion when the community elected our beautiful Samantha. As the new “Sports queen” of the village.
We’ve also celebrated eleven years since this village started working in our region. We had many important guests and also many friends came to congratulate us. It was a very nice party and our children participated with dances, poetry and talent shows. Through a video, the public learn more about the work of the SOS Children’s Villages and everybody was very happy and enthusiastic about it.

On July, we had the visit of Rikke and Jacob Hagemann from Denmark. We had very special moments with them. They spent a day with a village family, some children performed a folkloric dance for them and at the end they received souvenirs and typical sweets from Cuenca. They’re getting ready an article which will be spreaded all around Denmark.

For the next months, we’re planning a special workshops period for children over 11 years. On Saturdays they’ll go to a foundation which organises technical workshops in carpentry, mechanics, bakery, cooking and hair-styling and dressmaking. These activities are part of their complementary formation which will help them to have a technical training and a practical occupation for their future.

Supporting children and communities at Ricuarte

Our SOS moms, the educational team as well as the administrative area are getting permanently training about Children’s Rights in order to give a better care and guide to our boys, girls and adolescents and to put in daily practice the use of the rights focus. We’ve also organised a workshop about sexuality, oriented for village mothers and children. The topics were very interesting and all the participants were very satisfied with the information they got. They solved many doubts and learnt a lot during this workshop.

On October we carried out some integration activities of our children with the neighbor community. We did a walk together with all the village children, the youth of the facilities and our neighbors and friends to celebrate the chance to share experiences in the nature. We’ve also invited public organizations to make demonstrations for our children. Among the participants were the Firefighter company of Cuenca which did a great exhibition, very funny and interesting. Now many of our kids are dreaming about becoming firemen!

Also, on October, we opened a SOS child minding program to complement our labor in this region. The social centre works with services of daily care, feeding, and extra support lessons for about 28 boys and 34 girls and also offers support and guide to about 40 mothers of these children in Ricaurte parish. We hope that the efforts of our staff will serve to decrease the children’s abandonment and to improve the life’s conditions inside these helpless families.

November and December will be months of celebrations with Cuenca’s foundation parties and the traditional Christmas and New Year’s Eve holidays. We’ll be celebrating with much happiness the end of this year 2007 which has been a good year for our village. We’ve fulfilled many of our objectives and we already have many plans for the next year!

Together with this letter we send a very warm hug and our best wishes for the next holidays!

Sincerely,
Nancy Barahona, SOS Chidren’s Villages Cuenca Directress & Cristina Padilla de Ontaneda, International Sponsorships Advisor