Los Quinchos

Early on in my service, I was looking for a place where I could work with youth on a fairly regular basis. It just so happened that our host family knew someone who was looking looking for a person tod work with youth. Sylvia’s (our host ‘mom’) sister Glenda is the director of an educational center called Los Quinchos, located in Somoto. And so my relationship with Los Quinchos was born.

Adolescents playing a Trivial-Pursuit-esque game that Matt and I made up. It has questions about health, random facts and how to translate words to English.

The Center basically functions like an afterschool/before school program for underprivileged kids. Nicaraguan students have school either in the morning or afternoon. The students at Los Quinchos who have class in the afternoon attend Los Quinchos in the morning and vice versa. Students are selected from families that are severely impoverished, or where there has been a history of abuse or violence. Children ages 10 – 18 may attend Los Quinchos, where they receive a free meal, help with their homework and attend one of a variety of technical classes. Young children learn what Nicaraguans call ‘ Manualidades’, basically, what we call ‘Crafts’ – knitting, cross-stitching, piñata-making, etc .. Adolescent girls attend sewing class and adolescent boys learn carpentry.

Some of my younger students in front of the mural that they designed and made about nutricious foods!

Kickball Time!

My work with Los Quinchos has evolved over the last year or so, but now I work with both the young children and adolscents. Once a week, I arrive in the morning, and work for a half an hour with the children, teaching them the basics of hygiene, nutrition, self-esteem, etc..I then move on to the adolescent, where we work on various projects and have classes about sexual and reproductive health. I stay for lunch and repeat the rotation in the afternoon with the new group of students that arrive after lunch. This past week, I had my first session with the students parents. Over 30 parents came and we held a participatory session on Family Violence, its effects, consecuences and how to detect and avoid it in the home. We structured the session in such a way that we, the facilitators, did very little lecturing, but instead left it up to the parents to share their existing knowledge with their peers. It was a huge success.

Kids eating the small meal that Los Quinchos provides them with. It usually consists of rice, beans and a tortilla. Sometimes there is chicken or beef, and lately there has been a lot of soup-like foods with yellow split peas in them because the World Food Program donated a mountain of yellow peas!

Matt is about to also be involved with Los Quinchos. The Irish student group that he worked with to build the El Cairo health post last year is coming to Somoto again this year, this time to work with Los Quinchos. They are planning on improving the water/latrine system, building a stove, a basketball court and (I hope!) a treehouse for the kids. So we will be spending a lot of time at Los Quinchos in July.