Hello it’s me, Jose, again. I’m now writing to you about my thoughts on the daycare we visited this week. The little kids are so adorable and cute. When I was playing and dancing with them it made me so happy and I felt like a 5 year old again. Seeing them laugh and smile made me feel so warm in the inside. When I was with the kids, I also felt bad for them because they suffer a lot. They lack wealth and money and their town is affected by natural disasters, primarily flooding. When I heard that we were helping out by painting their school and building them area area to play, I was so excited and ready to work for the next morning.
When we arrived at the school the next morning, we got straight to work. Everyone was excited to finally be doing some physical work and it was all for the kids. We planned what colors to paint the walls and also cleaned up the mess they had behind the school. It looked like a jungle back there! Underneath the weeds and dirt piles was a lot of trash, glass and other random things that should not be near small children.
We designed a mural to paint on a wall that was a blank canvas. Our first day at the daycare center was a lot of prep work, but it was on the second day when we really started to see the change we were making on the daycare center. The children and parents from the community come up to us to thank us for the work we were doing. That gave me more motivation to continue on with the project.
Fast forward to the final day of the transformation. We were finishing the final paint jobs on the mural, walls and tire playground. Many of the kids were so excited and joined in on the painting fun. Some children were running around and jumping on the new playground we made out of old tires and sand. Seeing the smiles, joy and excitement on the faces of the children made waking up early in the morning, being tired and back pain and body aches from the manual labor all worth it.
This whole experience has made me realize how much we take things for granted back home. We don’t appreciate of how well the government cares about our needs and education while people and children in Paraguay suffer from flooding and lack of resources. Their government doesn’t help as much as ours and it seems like it’s up to the younger generation of Paraguayans to make positive changes in their communities. Seeing all of this and helping even in the smallest way possible made me feel so happy to know that I gave back to a community that needed an extra helping hand. To see the smiles on the kids’ faces when we told them they had a new playground to use was the best moment of my life. My time in Paraguay changed me a lot and my point of view in the world. I’m ready to make a similar impact to my communities in Washington, DC.
Jose O., Paul Public Charter School
