when I volunteer with children…

.. I feel like a child myself! 

always and everyday when I am volunteering with kids at the foundation, I become a kid myself. I think it happens more so because we are all equal. While I am trying to teach them craft, they are trying to teach me how to speak their language correctly. I am forever so grateful to them for the love and patience they *for most time* have. 🙂

June is the month of children in Angola and when the foundation was planning for a celebration, I was all in for volunteering for it.

Most of the children I volunteer with and volunteer for come from very poor backgrounds and it was important for me that this day was special, fun and something they would be looking forward to and talking afterwards :). I so wanted to make it special for them!

We started planning for the day more than a month ago. One of the earliest thing that was planned was to make the day special not just for the children who come to the foundation every day but to invite more children from an orphanage. And to make it extra special, the foundation’s children hand made gifts for each of the child coming from the orphanage. It was very touching to see them all gift their artwork happily 🙂

A month before the coordinators and volunteers started working with the children to prepare a spectacular talent show with theatre acts, singing and dancing.

We have an open quadrangle where we were hosting the party. I wanted the whole ambience to look like a fête so we planned on having “stalls” at the windows. I think what I enjoyed most was making the decor for the whole event. It was like planning a fête theme birthday party :). We made stripped banners and cutouts for the food stalls (and in the process I learned hot dog is literally translated in Portuguese to Cacharro Quente!:)). For the day more friends volunteered to help with the stalls and Ana also found a lady who came in with a ice-cream vending machine! 😀

We created a photo booth with funky props all hand made. On the day, since morning everyone was at putting up the decor. The exhibition with the kids artwork of the year; the food banners; the stage area; the big balloon arc! Ah! I felt like a little kid. All excited for the big party to begin 🙂

And when it did, it was amazing to see the cheer on the children’s faces when they entered a place they come to everyday and saw it transformed! We had put a green plastic grass carpet to give the whole place a feel of a garden and everyone had a ball at it.

The performances were amazing! The littles ones singing for all the children and the showing off their skills in different performances. It was a day of the kids and for the kids.

Here is a slideshow with snapshots from the event