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It all started last Christmas when Red Viva Paraguay (‘Red’ means ‘network’ in Spanish) threw Viva Christmas Parties for almost 1,500 children in several central neighbourhoods of Asuncion, Paraguay’s capital city. These Christmas Parties are a great way to introduce kids to projects that want to help them, and for projects in our Paraguay network to get used to working together. Throwing Christmas Parties for hundreds of vulnerable kids takes a lot of teamwork!The parties were such a success that the participating projects decided to keep holding community outreach activities throughout the year, so that we can get to know the children of our neighbourhoods and build up strong relationships with them. That way when they have problems at home or need other kinds of help, they’ll trust us to help them instead of turning to the streets or to drugs.
Viva’s World Weekend of Prayer back in June really helped us kick things off, as more projects and churches wanted to see continued outreach. So we formed a working group to come up with strategies to reach vulnerable children. The first proposal was for Vacation Camp, and we went for it. With the help of a PE teacher who offered to come from Germany and do the sports training, and a group of young girls in Canada who helped us raise funds for the project, we were all ready to go!
There are five local projects (members of Red Viva Paraguay) and seven actively supporting local churches working together to bring Vacation Camp to the kids of Asuncion. We started by meeting every week to co-ordinate the event and, despite little bumps along the way, the burden of work - and fundraising - was shared among everyone. If you’ve ever tried working with a group of people you’ll know that’s hard to do! Viva also provided training for all the volunteers who would run Vacation Camp. Especially important is teaching these volunteers how to identify signs of abuse that children might show, so that we can get help for them immediately.
One of the most exciting things for me has been seeing teenagers from two of the projects, a care home for children and youth and a day centre for kids affected by HIV/AIDS, involved in Vacation Camp. If you know teenagers, you know they often want to do their own thing. But we have more than 30 amazing teenagers helping as volunteers with the younger kids! They have a leading role in organising the events, and also they’re on the front line, interacting with the kids. Even more importantly, these teenagers attended Viva’s training and learned to look out for abuse … a skill they’ll be able to use whenever they meet new friends in their neighbourhoods.
Unfortunately we had a bout of cold weather this week – it’s winter here in beautiful South America – so not as many kids came out on Monday as we were hoping for. Vacation Camp was originally supposed to be held in a park in central Asuncion, but we were able to move quickly into a sports hall on the property of a children’s home – a member of Red Viva Paraguay, of course! Working together as a network has made all the difference in bringing an exciting camp to these vulnerable kids.
On Monday and Tuesday our volunteers braved the cold to pull off a variety of activities designed to help kids warm up. Children from age six right through to teenagers had sports training, played football, learned dance choreography and expressed their creativity with arts and crafts, ate a delicious hot snack, and learned about the love of Jesus through a dramatic show from a team of evangelistic performers – including clowns! (No party in South America is complete in without clowns.)
For the rest of the week, our teenaged volunteers are going to walk through the neighbourhoods around Vacation Camp looking for more street kids to invite. We don’t want any child to miss the chance to meet people who love them and hear the gospel! We’re hoping to forge close relationships with more children from this community, and their families, to bring them closer to churches in their area and get them as much help as we can offer. Which is a lot, since there is such a variety of organisations in Viva’s Paraguay network … day care centres, community schools, day centres and community kitchens, care homes, and churches all work together to improve the lives of Asuncion’s vulnerable children.
The response from the staff and volunteers of all the projects and churches making Vacation Camp possible is very positive. They can’t wait to do more community outreach camps like this soon, when the weather warms up and more kids will come out! Here at the network we’re just so excited to see local projects and churches really working together to reach out to more children at risk. Watch this space to see what we come up with next!
~ Anja, Network Director for Viva in Paraguay
Find out more about what we’re doing to reach out to children in Latin America in the areas of …
Advocacy: http://www.viva.org/Advocates/
Health: http://www.viva.org/Feeding/
Safety: http://www.viva.org/Encounter/
Why is it so important to train the staff and volunteers working with children? http://www.viva.org/QualityCare/
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