Project Life
Volunteer work with children in Ecuador

The First Two Weeks:

If you are taking Spanish, the first two weeks will be spent mainly concentrating on this, though you will get a chance to go to the communities to shadow existing volunteers.

See up to date info on the project Blog

Once the Spanish classes have been taken, you will travel to the communities on a daily basis from Monday to Friday in a minivan (or a safe public bus if you are working in Larcacunga) the price of which is included. The journey takes approximately 1 hour from Otavalo up into the rural mountains where our communities are based. We leave Otavalo at 7am and are back in Otavalo by 2.30pm. The school day starts at 8.00am, and the morning classes runs until around 10.45am. At 11.00am we feed the children lunch that we cook with help from the local mothers.

The afternoon class runs from 11.30 until 1.00pm. After this we clean up the classes with the kids, and give out fruit. The minivan, or public bus leaves to go back to Otavalo at 1.30pm after some playtime with the kids. The classes are mainly based around broad topics such as mathematics, language, social sciences, sports, and art. You will be informed of all the classroom information and structure when you get to Otavalo. You will also be trained in lesson planning and classroom management before you get to the schools, and you will be eased into the teaching environment slowly and gently, based on your confidence levels.

Volunteer Opportunities:

The aim of our project is primarily around education for the children, with a secondary view to help the community as a whole wherever we can. With our help we can reduce the teacher to student ratio from 40 kids to 1 teacher, down to 10 to 1, or less. In doing this we can give the kids a lot more individual attention, identifying weaknesses and building on their strengths and interests. We can bring in resources to aid teaching that the kids would not otherwise have, and can create lessons that are exciting, practical based and fun.

We try to make the classes dynamic, using various methods of teaching, including oral, copies, exercise books, games and other methods the individual volunteer can bring in. We promote the idea of the volunteer bringing in their own ideas too and also to teach other subjects, as well to reach the goals by the end of the year.

The rate of transition from primary school to high school in Ecuador is alarmingly low. Only around 12% of children attend high school. In our communities we are not only trying to change the mindset of parents and encourage our kids to continue their schooling after grade 6, but we are also providing the necessary funding to allow them to attend high school in Otavalo. Our aim is to ensure that the children are physically, mentally and emotionally prepared for secondary school education and then financially support them through it.

We also have a nutrition program in operation to build the children’s nutritional health and ensure they have sufficient energy to learn at school, and work in the fields, after school. In the mornings the kids get a hot drink called Colada. At lunch we provide rice, lentils, vegetables and tuna, chicken or meat. To illustrate how important this meal is to the communities, the children usually only eat half of what we give them, and take the rest home for their parents to eat. We also give the kids fruit at the end of the day. School finishes at 1.oopm, but the children then drop their bags at home and go to work in the fields with their parents until dinner time. By giving them some good food during the day, they will at least have the energy to do the afternoons work after a tiring day of school.