Monday, February 26th
We are now on our final week of our journey in Argentina and although we are looking forward to coming home to see our family & pets, we are sad to be leaving such a beautiful, unique place. 

Today we went to La Sarten por el Mango. This is a community based after school program for children ages 6-12. The area where the children are from is quite poor and run down, unfortunately many of the children that attend the program are living in poverty. 

The founders Ben and Valé were there to greet us upon arrival at 10am. They gave us an orientation to the program and explained their mission to us. Ben and Valé explained they believe in using a holistic approach to create a program for the children. Something that was mentioned by Ben was that they do focus a lot on health. This is because they believe that if children are not healthy, they will struggle to learn.. how true!  With that being said, this place provides the children with a little bit of everything. The after school program offered children a safe place for learning activities, play and physical activities, nutritious meals, opportunities for communication, and forming relationships with peers and mentors. With the goal to give the children all the life skills they need to succeed in life and form a stronger community. The building includes everything that a great after school program needs! A classroom, multipurpose room, kitchen, basketball court and even a dog and cat!

Once we finished our orientation, we started our volunteer work! We helped make pizzas and paint the programs new vehicle with colorful designs until the kids arrived at 1330. When the kids arrived, they were so welcoming, and seemed so excited to meet us Canadians. We played various games including hopscotch, skip rope & basketball (we felt like kids again ourselves and enjoyed every minute of it); followed by sharing the delicious pizza we made, and oranges for desert (this was by far our favourite meal).

After finishing up eating, the CBU nursing students taught the kids about proper hand hygiene by teaching them the 6 steps of hand hygiene. We made it more memorable for the kids by putting the steps into a song! After that we did a small health assessment on the children including measuring their weight, height and waist circumference.

To finishing off our activities we then sat down in a big circle and had a concert by our very own famous fiddler Jennifer Roland and two of the guys who worked there joined in with a guitar and some drums. The kids loved  it and so did we. Many of the children participated in playing instruments and singing along.

We then had a second snack carrot cake and banana smoothies and reflected on the day we had, each one of us told one another one special moment about our day as a reflection about how the day went.

This was definitely one of our favourite days in Buenos Aires. It was amazing to see how all our nursing students could make a connection with the children despite the language barrier. Just goes to show there is SO much more to communication than just words. This is something we will carry in our nursing practice forever. It was very heart warming to see the wonderful relationships the kids had with the instructors at the program. The kids had so much respect for the instructors, and it was quite obvious where they get it from, as the instructors demonstrated lots of respect for the children.. they were wonderful role models. 

In closing, the students had a wonderful day at this program, an experience we will remember throughout our career for a lifetime. We cannot thank the founders enough for having us, they are truly amazing, selfless people.

Here is a website where you can go see what the program is all about! They also always accept donations! 

http://Socialopportunitygroup.com 

Thanks for reading!