Children sponsor letter from Jordan
21/12/2007
Dear Sponsors of SOS Children’s Villages Jordan,
Ref: Facility Progress Report SOS Children’s Villages Jordán 1st semester 2007
I hope you are enjoying good health when you’ll receive this letter. Within the framework of a new sub-project of the National Office called ‘Two Villages managed by one Director’, I’m glad to write you as the new director of the SOS Children’s Villages of Jordan and Tiquipaya. I’m Fernando Rojas and I’m a psychologist.
With great enthusiasm, we want to share with you all the different activities and the daily life of the Children’s Villages. The SOS Children’s Villages of Jordan has 13 families. Two of them live in other neighborhoods of the city. The Village has 124 children and adolescents, 28 youths between 16 and 19 years old who are in the Professionalization Stage, and 19 youths who are in the Advising or Assisted Housing Stage, which is a previous step toward the Independization.
One of the families who lived out of the Village, moved last year to another neighborhood. It was hard for this family to find a house for such a big family; they are 8 children and a mother. Besides, to move to another neighborhood implied the children to change school too. They were kind of fearful because everything was new; however, it didn’t take a long time for them to realise about the benefits of the new neighborhood. In front of the house, there is a playground and all the children of the neighborhood gather there at nights. Quickly, they made friends and they turned out to be, in many cases, their classmates. Now, this family got used to their routine and they are happy because of the change. The family is organised so well to do their activities in the neighborhood and still attending the community activities in the Village.
The work the mothers did since last year for their children to participate in external formation and personal development activities, like dance, vocational orientation programs, sexual formation, school reinforcement courses, etc., are having now an effect on the daily life of the children and adolescents. The participation of the children and adolescents in the Scout Group and other specific activities according to their own likes, are allowing them to have different development opportunities and the chance to have larger social contacts with children from the external community. Most of them attended to a camp for the first time in their lives, they cooked with wood and slept in tents. These experiences are lived with great intensity by the children, who tell their mothers about all the details once they are back. The mothers recognize the great value of these activities and they take them as motivation for their children.
Regarding the vocational formation for youths, the community is proposing to move the Program that was held inside the Village to a school in the neighborhood so it can offer these services to all the adolescents of the external community and, among them, their children could participate too. We hope this program is working since the middle of this year.
We can see and say that, after more than a year the Offices of the Village are physically out of the Village, this situation has contributed to the families to live their daily life in a more natural way, without the influence and the ‘weight’ of the institution on the families. It was a good measure for the families so they can carry out their lives freely and widely in family sceneries and within their community.
The community life is not neglected either, it’s especially important on holidays and civic and religious dates. Easter, for instance, is celebrated with much joy. Families invite their friends, teachers, relatives and independent youths to participate on the Easter Sunday celebration and they do their best cooking the best dishes for their guests.
All the children and adolescents that must attend school are registered in schools. Regarding sports, the soccer departmental championship started some time ago and the children form the Village and the external community participated in two categories: Pets (Sub-9 years old) and Pibes (sub-13 years old). The Village’s basketball team got the third place in the summer championship; the annual championship started in June and the team is training to get the Champion Title this year.
Following the Family Strengthening logic through the attention to youths, we still have 3 Youth Facilities where 70% of the youths are from other cities of Bolivia and 30% are from Cochabamba City. We are also supporting the options for the youths to live with their biological families, their older siblings or their mothers’ families so they can continue their development in the process to their Independization, under the consent and responsibility of their mothers.
On the other hand, we expect three aunts, in charge of houses, to end their course by the end of June and to graduate then, completing this way their formation to become mothers.
The closest Program to the Village is the Nourishment Formation Centre, which professional education is promoted since 9 years ago. Youths from the SOS Villages or from poor families or areas can attend this Centre. Currently, there are 50 students, 60% of them are youths from SOS Villages. The youth who fulfills the requirements to be accepted in the Program, can study in one of the seven Educative-Productive areas of the Curricular Model (Bakery, Pastry, National and International Cooking, Costumer’s Attention and Restaurants Management, Fruits, Vegetables and Cereals Transformation, Milky and Meat Derivates).
The collaborators of the Centre are proud of being graduated students from that same Centre. They always have phone class from former students who tell them about their new jobs; most of them are jobs in prestigious hotels or important restaurants in the biggest cities of our country. These words, just listened on the phone, encourage the collaborators to continue working every day and they are also a good example for the youths who are studying.
During this year, the CENFOTEC has continued with the implementation of the Labor Competences Model that includes the ‘to know to do’ (practice), ‘to know to know’ (theory) and ‘to know to be’ (attitude). This Program is part of an educative project at a national level, which is formed by all the Technical Formation Centers and the Schools. They started promoting an innovative educative offer in the country under the Enterprising pedagogic focus. Through the flexibilization of the educative curriculum and the alliances and agreements with other organisations that work for the sustainable human development in Bolivia, it will be possible to get a larger attention covering for a goal population with many needs and desires of being better people.
For Easter, the students participated in special chocolate courses where they had an exhibition of their work and we could see different chocolate designs, colors and flavors.
That’s all we can tell you, we send you greetings from the children, adolescents and their mothers.
Fernando Rojas
SOS Children’s Villages’ Director Cochabamba
Sponsor update from Santa Cruz
Dear Friend,
Ref: Facility Progress Report SOS Children’s Villages Santa Cruz 1st semester 2007
I’m happy to be in touch with you again and I’m glad to tell you about the activities of the SOS Children’s Villages in Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
There are three programs that belong to the organisation in the city. They are the SOS Children’s Villages, the Family Strengthening Program for the Infantile Abandon Prevention and the SOS School. These three programs assist 2.438 children and adolescents and their families.
We have 11 stable families in the SOS Children’s Villages and we assist 151 children and adolescents within the village’s infrastructure and there are also two families living in other neighbourhoods of the city. They are in touch with all the services in those places, like schools, medical care posts, sport fields, etc., and it’s important to point out that these two families are still in touch with the families in the Village.
From 151 children and adolescents, 64 of them are between 11 and 18 years old. During the last months, we received 13 new children, who are part of the different SOS families. The search process of biological relatives started for three specific families in the Village and they got good results and then, we’ll continue that process with the rest of the families.
The SOS Children’s Villages, in order to support needy families, helped a family who lives in a city periphery neighborhood. They were 7 biological siblings between 2 and 12 years old who required integral attention because their biological mother was at the Oncology Hospital in our city because of terminal uterine cancer. The SOS families help them with the endowment of dry food portions, meat, clothes and shoes. They help with them much love, dedication and satisfaction.
The children and adolescents of the SOS families have a balanced diet according to their ages so their weights, heights and integral development are excellent. In general, all the children and adolescents play sports at nights. Some of them are part of the community teams and they are required because of their good performance. There are also children, especially 5 year old children, who discovered their dance skills. They practice 3 times a week and one of the youths are part of the National Classic Ballet group and he’s a good student in this art. The children of the Village formed two chorus groups and they had official performances in different events.
The school performance of the children and youths during the first trimester was good; however, there are also children who have some learning problems so their mothers give them a personalised support and they also have support teachers who reinforce the mothers’ labor. This year, eleven youths are in the professionalisation stage. Two of them study the technical career of Agriculture, two of them study Business Administration, two of them study to become Integral Beauticians, one of them study Nourishment, one of them study Graphic Printing, one of them study to become Computers technician and one of them study Electronics. One of the youths didn’t start her technical career because of personal reasons. Besides her, the rest of the youths are doing well in their technical studies.
In our Family Strengthening Program for the Infantile Abandon Prevention (Social Centers), we are working to attend 1580 children and their families in communities that are part of the poverty map of our city. They are organised and ask for our support to work together and prevent the infantile abandon. We have 53 Community Homes in different neighbors of the city so that we have become a good educative and orientation option with the families and mothers of the surrounding community. Besides the work we do with the children component, we also work with the family, woman and community components. More that 80% of the families were qualified on ‘Good treatment’ topic, 103 mothers were qualified on quick and technical occupations to improve their economical incomes like clothes painting, manicure, macramé and others. Likewise, 100 women were qualified in a Self-Esteem Strengthening program. Furthermore, we have 59 Family Committees who participate in their communities’ development.
The SOS School has 706 children and adolescents from 452 families. The school activities started on February 5th. We had many curricular and extra-curricular school activities during the first trimester with children and adolescents as well as some workshops with their families. The most outstanding activities of this first trimester are the Solidary Campaign of students and teachers to help our siblings in Beni, who were affected but natural disasters like a great flood.
The biggest celebration within the Village was the Child’s Day. During April we had different activities like the promotion, diffusion and practice of the Children and Adolescents’ Rights by the adults through study and recreational activities, celebrations and Preventive Health practice activities.
We also had the work of the Emergency Programs in Santa Cruz. One of the consequences of the climatologic Child Phenomena in Santa Cruz and Beni were the spates that destroyed houses and crops and killed animals; therefore they stayed in an alarming emergency and need state. Before this situation, SOS Children’s Villages opened two Emergency Infantile Centers for children who suffered the floods; we attended 160 children in Trinidad City ad 64 children in Santa Cruz. We had a campaign in Santa Cruz City called ‘Families help families’, where we looked for the solidary contribution of the community and the answer was very favorable as it allowed us to support more than 1300 families who suffered the floods.
Guido Pablo Pecho Rivero
SOS Children’s Villages’ Director Santa Cruz
Child sponsorship update from Tarija
Dear Friend,
Ref: Facility Progress Report Tarija SOS Children’s Villages - 1st semester 2007
We send you greetings and a grateful hug from our Program. After having a hot summer, we are getting ready for a cold winter, which is possible to fight just with the human warmth of the families in the Village. With these feelings, we take the opportunity to share the changes and processes in the community of the Village with you.
This year, 13 families from the Village of Tarija could consolidate and strengthen the community work by assuming responsibilities for the common wellbeing and the harmonic and solidary coexistence with each other. The important step of 16 youths to the professionalisation stage at the beginning of this year as part of the qualifying and preparation process to the Independent Stage, has allowed the humanitarian possibility for the mothers to receive with open arms new children who full the families with joy and rejoicing.
We started this year with 107 children; we received 9 children, between 7 months old and 10 years old from different cultures and origins, but with the same need of having a family. With them, they bring their own stories, like Maribel, who has an indigenous origin and whose mother died suddenly and unexpectedly after giving birth leaving Maribel, two days old, and her 2 year old sister unprotected. Almost immediately, they were separated; the mother grandmother took care of the 2 year old girl, besides the 8 children she already had in her town; and Maribel stayed with an aunt in the city, who had to take care of the newly born. She never did it, as mother Natividad could verify, during the welcome process, the abandon state of the child and her precarious health conditions, like malnutrition. The doctors said that just a ‘miracle’ could save her life and that miracle happened at mother Natividad’s house with her 8 children. Due to the support and love she received, Maribel is already more than 1 year old. She’s a strong girl who already walks and says her first words. Now they are getting ready to look for her sister so they both can live together in the family of mother Natividad.
The mothers have strengthened even more the contact with the biological families and for the children who have no family reference at all, they decided to investigate and contact a lost past by visiting the home towns, which will allow the meeting of the children and adolescent with their identity, values and cultural and family history. They made an important step by involving the biological relatives in the accompaniment and pursuit process of the personal development of the children and adolescents with a co-responsibility commitment.
As a general usage, regarding to health, the children had a routine medical check, which showed appropriate nutrition levels for them, therefore, the malnutrition problems of the children that just entered the Village were overcame and now they have a suitable corporal and growth development.
The school year started and the children attend to different schools in the city. Ramon, who is 13 years old and has an average mark of 68 over 70, got a scholarship to study in a prestigious school during this year. The mothers, also, assist their children or youths with their learning problems in psycho pedagogic cabinets or individualized assistance cabinets to overcome these problems.
Children and Youths participate in different teams and sports. Among them, basketball: the girls’ team got a sub-championship. Three of the players are part of the selection team of Tarija and they participate in national championships. In indoor soccer, boys got medals for the second place in a championship. Another important fact is that children had an outstanding performance in the Tae-kwon-do International and Pan-American Championship where participated countries like Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and others. Abraham (13), Rita (12), Luis (15) and José (8) were champions in their category and they had a public recognition at local level as outstanding sportsmen of the year by the Departmental Prefecture of Tarija.
From the Children’s nets and alliances where children and adolescents participate, Fabian (9), democratically chosen as deputy for one day, represented Tarija with other children in the Legislative Parliament of our country and he demanded the Children’s and Adolescents’ rights fulfillment. Laura (15) represented the youth of Tarija in the Constituent Assembly in Sucre, where she brought proposals to be considered in the new constitution.
Currently, there are 49 youths in the professionalization stage and they are studying the technical careers they like or are interested on. Some of them live with their biological relatives and get their support and love, which help them to have an emotional balance. Some youths, for their own satisfaction and to make their mothers and families proud of them, graduated from their technical careers: we have two technicians who studied Nourishment Technology, one youth who studied Tailoring, 4 youths who studied Hairdressing, one youth who studied Integral Cosmetology and one youth who studied Administrative Secretariat. Meanwhile, others youths are still studying their technical careers or studying at the university like Vilma, Daniela and Daysi, who are studying Biochemistry, Civil Engineering and Business Administration with a good learning process.
We also have 22 youths in Advising Stage; two of them are still doing their military service as a personal commitment. The rest of the youths are working steadily in jobs related to their technical study areas and they are elaborating important projects for the creation of future micro-enterprises.
Other program from Tarija is the SOS SOCIAL CENTRE. As you already know, the Family Strengthening Programs’ objective is to prevent the infantile abandon by strengthening the families and communities. The results we expect are focused in creating conditions for the families to be able to have better social and economic opportunities, to improve their life quality and to have social mobility. This is possible from an integral work with children, women, families and communities.
Currently, in Tarija, there are more than 2.000 children and 1.540 families who are participating in the Family Strengthening Program and they have services at the Social Centre and the 104 Community Houses that are located in the poorest neighborhoods of the city.
Parents participate and they are the principal actors of the achievements as they are organized in 65 family groups called Family Committees. The Family Committees are formed by 15 or 20 parents and they manage the Community Houses, they buy food and pedagogic material leaded by a Facilitator. They practice a solidary social control and the families help each other so they become the reference of the children’s, women’s and family’s rights fulfillment and defense.
The strategic Alliances that we’ve got during the first term of this year, allowed us to have the tally of the local funds and the co-responsibility with the state organizations that give us the dry food and assure the medical and odontological assistance for all children who participate in our Project in the different State Health Centers.
Nowadays, more than 760 mothers are getting qualified in different areas like Literacy, Self-Esteem, Tenderness pedagogy, technical workshops and others. Parallelly, and with the objective of giving them the tools to improve their economical conditions, there are qualifying and accompaniment processes for the mothers regarding to enterpriser ideas of their own initiative.
At the same time, Tarija has an EDUCATIVE UNIT, the SOS School, with more than 630 students and about 370 families.
In the social area, like pedagogy, there is the Implementation of the Intra-Family Violence Prevention Project, with workshops about Rules of Upbringing and Values in the families, and festivals directed to the values and children’s rights and duties promotion; likewise, there are activities directed to the strengthening of the family bonds like the “Traditional Games Practice” with parents and children.
The Healthy School is a service for the students to be affiliated to the Free Public Health, to have medical checks and assistance health treatments; the oral health program started also, which includes prevention and attention of special odontological cases activities.
On the other hand, the school becomes an important space to identify risky situations that affect children, mother women or families in their integrity, in cases of violence or abuse to children, they receive psychological support in coordination with the Children and Adolescence Advocacy Office.
Once again, it was proved the solidary work of the Family Committees; in the self-help meetings, they supported families who were in difficult situations and they had fund-raising activities helping single mothers who have no enough economical incomes for supporting their children.
With this information, we wanted to summarize and transmit all the satisfaction and gratefulness of the families who had the chance to improve their situation and the situation of hundred of children who found love, nourishment, affection and protection in our Programs, thanks to many kind hearts like yours, who help us and transmit your solidarity and allow us to give an opportunity to these families. Therefore, on behalf of Tarija SOS Children’s Villages, we THANK YOU VERY MUCH with all our heart.
Lucy Maldonado
SOS Children’s Villages’ Director Tarija
Child sponsor letter from Tiquipaya
Dear Friend,
Ref: Facility Progress Report SOS Children Villages Tiquipaya
Dear sponsors of Tiquipaya SOS Children’s Villages, I hope you are enjoying good health when you’ll receive this letter. I send you my warmest greetings, especially from the children who you support every month.
In the sub-project new work frame of the National Office ‘two villages managed by one director’, I’m glad to write you as the new director of the Tiquipaya SOS Children’s Villages. I’m Fernando Rojas, psychologist.
With enthusiasm, we want to share with you different activities and the daily life of the Children’s Villages. The population of Tiquipaya Children’s Villages is 113 children and adolescents. The youngest one is Angela, who is three months old. She entered the Village the last day of April and she is part of a family of 8 children. Her situation is very special. Nowadays, her biological relatives can’t take care of her as they live in the countryside; however her biological family has subscribed an alliance with the SOS family to be co-responsible people regarding Angela’s care in all the aspects. From 13 families, one live in other neighborhood of the city and another family will start living out of the Village in June. Twenty youths between 16 and 19 years old are in the Professionalization Stage and 12 youths are in Advising Stage or assisted housing, this last stage is the previous step toward the Independization.
Let me tell you that the integral formation programs (sexuality development, vocational orientation, personal development, etc.) are being held with a children’s and adolescents’ rights focus so they are not only practiced but also promoted by themselves.
Children and adolescents also participate in the Scout Group and other sport activities like swimming pool, soccer and basketball, according to their likes. This allows us to offer them different opportunities of development and social contact with children from the extern community.
We can see and say that after a year the office went out of the Villages physically, it really helped the families to live their daily life in a more natural way, without the influence and the ‘weight’ of the institution over them. It was a good step for them to develop freely and widely in family sceneries and in their community. All the children and adolescents are registered in school according to their ages and the grade they must attend. We still have the Healthy Child medical control periodically. During the last months, two children had surgeries; one 13 year old girl and one 10 year old girl because of appendicitis. One of them is still getting better.
A closer relationship between mothers and children are still being strengthened and facilitated. The different housing options during the Advising stage always take into count the mother’s consent and responsibility.
Juan Carlos, in Costa Rica, started studying a Master in Agronomy and Deógenes is still in Brazil until July, when he’ll finish his specialisation studies in architectonic design.
The Family Strengthening Program is near the Village. Its purpose is to decrease the Infantile Abandon rates in the places it works, improving the quality of life of the participants through the women’s and families’ strengthening and the development of the communities and qualifying leaders for them to know and practice their rights.
We assist 165 children in the Social Centre, who belong to 76 families; 1300 children who belong to 750 families are assisted in the Community Houses that are located in peripheral neighborhoods under social risk. This Program assists, in total, 1465 children. The Community Houses work in places that are given by the communities (Municipality and Neighbors Councils) so they are also co-responsible in the assistance for children under 6 years old, not only because of the spaces, but also because of the capital outlay as compensation for the integral assistance of children.
Likewise, women and families are qualified for them to achieve a personal development by improving their self-esteem feelings and literacy and knowing their rights. They are also taught regarding the labor area so they can improve their incomes. The idea that the mothers who are participating in the qualifying program get a degree as Naïve assistances, a profession recognized at national level, is being impelled.
The participant families socialize the program in the areas they live in and they incorporate families they consider need this support.
In this year, we are impelling the work in communities through the leaders’ qualification, who are later on, part of the Neighbors Councils or the Base Territorial Organizations trying them to be sensitive and to take actions in order to include financial resources for the integral assistance of children in the budget of their communities looking for its sustenance.
Another neighboring program to the Tiquipaya Village is the Agro-Ecological Formation Centre, which works since august 2nd, 1991. The profile of the students includes that they must be youths form the rural area and have approved the 8th grade; that they want to get a profession and to have leader aptitudes. One of the students is Julia. She comes from the Titicaca Lake area and she’s sponsored by the CESA NGO. Julia could travel to Peru, to a regional youths’ meeting to share experiences of youths from Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, she represented her community.
The Center has 43 students who come from different places of the country, including youths from Bolivia SOS Children’s Villages. Nine students are in the first study year, 16 students are in the second study year and 18 students are in the third study year. These last students returned to their communities to practice what they’ve learned in the first two years as part of their formation.
Dear sponsors, I hope you knew more about our activities and the daily life of Tiquipaya Children’s Villages and what we are getting with the children and adolescents. We send you warm greetings from the children, adolescents and mothers.
Lic. Fernando Rojas
SOS Children’s Villages’ Director Cochabamba - Tiquipaya
Relevant Countries: Bolivia.