Sponsor's update from Sucre, Bolivia

Child sponsorship update from the SOS Children's Village Sucre, Bolivia from Summer 2008.

Dear sponsors,

It’s a great satisfaction for us to give you new information about the development of SOS Children’s Villages Bolivia during this first term 2008. We hope this report allows you to feel closely the impact of your support that allows us to work with more than 13,500 beneficiaries this year, from which more than 1,400 live in an SOS Children’s Village.

SOS Children’s Village Sucre

Dear sponsors,

It’s a joy for us to write you again and tell you about the programs’ activities during this first term. We thank you very much for the effort and contribution you do for the formation of the children and youths we work with.

So far, SOS Children’s Villages Sucre has 108 children in twelve families. The projected covering for this year is 115 children; therefore, a temporary house will be opened and a person will be in charge of the education of 5 siblings. Later on, they will move to one of the two new houses that are being built.

Most of the children and youths are healthy; they visit the doctor routinely. A few children are still following a medical treatment for the Chagas disease. One boy will have a new lip reconstruction surgery since he had an accident before entering the village. We also have two girls with special abilities and they both attend a psycho-educational centre.

The SOS mothers, with the help of psychologists, work on the mourning theme with children who couldn’t overcome the loss of their parents or biological relatives. These traumatic issues are overcome through time and thanks to the trust children have on their families.

Education in Sucre, Bolivia

Forty five percent of children attend primary school and the rest, 55%, are adolescents who attend from 6th to junior class in high school. Their school performance is good; some of the mothers ask their children to take advantage of the first school trimester examinations to have no problems by the end of the school year.

Families are stable and they educate their children under a focus of rights and duties. This means that children, with their mothers, decide what to cook during the week; they choose what clothes to wear, what school or institute they would like to attend as well as the sport and art activities they want to practice.

Every time, we have more success regarding the search and approach of children to their biological families; the objective is to establish an alliance between the two families to contribute in the integral education of the children, especially in the emotional and identity areas.

Youths continue their integral formation. They decided to be qualified under an Entrepreneur focus and created, together the Youths’ Companions (personnel from the village who supervise the development of youths who live in Youth Facilities) the Entrepreneur Generation Group. They participate in fairs, workshops and chats about vocational education and other transversal topics that allow them to have a vision on the future, to socialise more with their environment and to generate entrepreneur ideas of professionalization. Thirty nine youths are in the professionalization stage; twenty one are in the advising stage and 12 are independent. From this last group, four youths got scholarships to continue their university studies and they got positive results. One of those youths is attending the third year of his university career: Philosophy, at the State University in Costa Rica.

Caring for children in Peru

In February, seven mothers were distinguished with the SOS Ring (distinction conferred to the SOS mothers who has been working for 15 years). Likewise, there are two persons in charge of families and 6 aunts who are in a good formation process.

Regarding the Family and Community Strengthening Programme for the Prevention of Child Abandonment, its coverage is 500 children in several Community Houses and 120 children at the Social Centre. They work in 21 Community Houses with 480 participant families and the work is based on four components:

Component Child: Health and Nutrition.From the beginning of this year, the Healthy Child Control has been carried out with the help of personnel from Health Centers. There have been campaigns of pediculosis, avitaminosis, scabies and fluoridation in coordination with the Health Centers in the neighborhood, parents and personnel in charge of the respective component. We could find out that there are 60 children with malnutrition and now they are having an overfeeding treatment.

Component Mother: Education. With a diagnosis of all the educator mothers in all the Community Houses and the Social Centre, a qualification plan has been carried out with each one of them. So far, they have been qualified on the following issues: Materials Elaboration (recycling), Culture of the Good Treatment, Dynamics, Planning, Work chronograms.

Component Woman: This year, it’s established to support the development of the protagonism and empowerment of the woman/mother in her private and family life through workshops about Self-Esteem, Reproductive and Sexual Health, Papanicolau campaigns, Literacy, Women’s Rights, Intra family Violence, Technical Qualification, Development of Small Enterprises, etc.

Component Family: So far, we are working with the families on legal advising and family assistance topics. It’s important to mention that we made a big effort presenting the Co-responsibility Model to be able to have a committee that can assume their responsibilities and a leader.

Component Community: We’ve been working with the leaders of every family committee and they’ve achieved 90% of the Internal Organization’s management of their respective family committee, the Assignment and Fulfillment of responsibilities, an autonomous Decision Making, the Management of economical resources assigned to each house and the Requirement of qualification themes for the participant population.

With the great pleasure of sharing with you part of the work we do in both programs in our branch SOS Children’s Village Sucre, we thank you very much for your unconditional support.

Sincerely,

Elvi Arciénega V
Director, Children’s Villages SOS Sucre