July 8, 2016 – Today was our last day at the Maxfield Park Children’s Home in Kingston, Jamaica. Since it was also our last full day in Kingston, we had the chance to stop at the crafts market. When we arrived at Maxfield Park, all of us had the job of going over all the different aspects of our social entrepreneurship workshop. So that meant that before doing anything we had to make sure the auditorium was set up according to our plans. Everyone that had a specific part in the workshop needed to ensure that they knew exactly what they would be doing and when. Since my main focus on this whole trip was being able to allow children to express themselves with art, I stayed with the younger children while the activity portion of the workshop went on. While I was with the children it was quite interesting. All of our team that were with the younger children decided that we would have a section that we would watch over. Although the children were only coloring pages and creating their own images, I tried to make things as effective as possible. So I decided that I would hold on to the crayon box and have the children name each color they wanted and make sure to say please and thank you. At first it was kind of difficult because they didn’t know the names of certain colors and they would often forget to say thank you. I decided that I would say the color first then have them repeat after me, after a while each of the children in our watch had the colors and remembered to say both please and thank you.
After the workshop was over, the children at Maxfield Park had a few performances. The first group that went up had their costumes on and began dancing. Then there was a few children who went up to sing with a live band. Every single performance was amazing, I couldn’t believe how much passion they had for singing and dancing. Each person that went up to sing just seemed like they had so much confidence. After all the performances all the children looked so free and happy. I didn’t stay to the very end because I went to go say goodbye to the babies. That moment alone was very emotional because I just kept thinking about how much time I had spent with the babies and then now I had to leave. Even from the first day that we arrived at Maxfield Park Children’s Home, I loved spending time with the babies and toddlers. They always looked so happy and began laughing every time we would hold them. Just being able to spend time with them made me realize that for my future fundraising idea I want to raise money to provide them with the things they may need or even figure out a way to get more people to come to Maxfield Park and work specifically with the babies.
Claire B-A, Parkdale High School