My experience as a Volunteer with Open Windows
June 04, 2010
At Open Windows, the kids and I play board games, read books, and make art projects. I enjoy watching them realize that life is not fair when we play shoots and ladders and watching them smile as we read about Jorge el Curioso’s naiveté. Two afternoons a week, I lead a soccer practice for the kids. They have played two games so far against two volunteer groups from Canada, and the kids dominated thoroughly. I play soccer everyday and love witnessing how universal soccer is as a language. The reactions after a missed shot, a lost play, a quick juke, or a hard foul are the same everywhere. In the evenings, I help with the youth group. This experience has been eye opening as well. Even the high school students or graduates do not have a basic knowledge of geography or world history. Most of the kids cannot find Guatemala on a world map or name the continents. We taught geography with a few lessons and a fierce round of jeopardy trivia. We also taught a lesson on African American history and the Garifuna peoples. Then we watched the Secret Life of Bees, and they now had the background information to understand the setting and the conflicts…