Today the dogs went to work!!!

This morning we embarked on our little excursion to el Hogar el Alba for a service learning project. The Hogar has been functioning for 90 years and it was founded by and English teacher. Usually they house 50 kids in five different ten person houses, but today there were only about 35 children because Argentina is currently in holiday, so the children are away on vacation. The children vary in ages from 3 years old to 18 years old. The purpose of this Hogar is to house, protect and educate children that are in situations of social risk. Children may end up at the Hogar for different reasons such as that their parents are imprisoned, they were suffering sexual abuse, or were just in a bad home. Generally they stay around three years; the goal is obviously to get the children back to their family as soon as possible, granted that the situation is better, or to place the children with an adoptive family. While at the Hogar the children work around the hogar like working in the bakery that is located in the Hogar, dairy farming, or making cheese from the dairy farming. This daily work shows the children something new and teaches them to work hard, where the parents of these children most likely worked for two days then had ten days off and sat around watching television. It is extremely apparent that all the people that work at the Hogar care about what they do and the children, especially considering the fact that the do not get paid. The Hogar mainly survives off of donations from people like us due to the fact that the government funding barely ever comes through.

  This is the main eating area and contains the kitchen 

                         

Upon arriving at the Hogar we were divided into six different groups in order for us to work in stations around the Hogar. The stations consisted of some work on the property and also playing with the kids. A lot of the stations had us painting different buildings some inside others out and various colors also. My group started en la panadería (the bakery) where we painted the tops of the walls and the ceiling then we went around back to a house that holds some of the children and we painted up the staircase into the hallways and the actual children’s rooms. The one that we were in was a girls room and there were two bunk beds and the walls had the girls drawings on them, which were very pretty flowers and there were also magazine pages taped all over the walls and it was exciting to think about if the kids would like their new room with freshly painted walls and what more will be drawn on them. 


Some other groups did some more painting elsewhere and then the other yard work station was in el Jardín, where there were some orange and lemon trees. One of the men from the Hogar weed wacked the grass as we racked up the hay and carried it over to the bridge near where the cows were. They put us to work and opened our eyes to a whole new side of the world. I was talking with a few of my group members and I remembered Ale saying “this puts things into perspective” and this experience really did. Not many of our students can say they have been to a place like this before or have experienced any hardships like these children face every day in our own lives. When talking to Nicole and Karin we reflected on the state of the Hogar and how by us doing all this work it really helps them save their time to do more for kids and spend their resources else where to help keep the place running and helping children. Also, we discussed how we feel like there should be more opportunities and requirements for students at Bryant to do service learning projects because it only makes us a better person and it also makes other people lives better. 

The look on the children’s faces as well as the adults faces while we were helping will stay with us for a long time and push us to be more aware of others situations as well as to help others.