November Updates from Ecuador!

In Flor our biggest accomplishment over the past few months has definitely been family involvement.  Involved families has had a direct result on the increased attendance, punctuality and grades of our students.  While there is always much more work to be done, I am really proud of our employees who have made great efforts to improve relations with our students' families.  As grades come in from first semester I am proud to say grades are improving across the board in Flor!  Parents have become involved in more ways - providing daily snack, and lunch twice a week for our international volunteers who travel 2 hours on bus twice a week from our Guasmo neighborhood where they live.  Parent meeting attendance is well over 90% as well - a great example for our Scholars!

During the November meeting our Flor educadores prepared a meeting for the parents about getting to know their children in a new way.  First we did a fun dinámica where the parents were blindfolded and had to find their child(ren) by touching their faces to see if they could recognize them. Then the child & parent teams had to present facts about each other - what they like to do, what they've learned from each other to the whole group.  Lastly, parents were asked to fill out a survey about how much they know about their child's school, grades, likes/dislikes, etc. in preparation for our next set of visits to the schools.

 

After the parents left, the kids got to finish up with a fun activitity with our volunteers, 2 of whom just finished their voluntariado.

 

In Guasmo, thanks to a continued partnership with Mi Cometa and the scholarship program that runs there - CASF, we have been blessed with the help of 3 educational psychology students in their last year of their studies.  As the prepare to graduate, they are completing their internships with Starfish & Mi Cometa families.  Twice per week they attend to special cases with our students and their parents, in hopes of establishing more communication, a better home life, and as a result the ability to succeed in their studies.  Once a week a licensed psychologist also comes to treat some of the more delicate cases, as delegated by the intern psychologists during the week.  This trial period will continue throughout December and we hope to continue this program next year as well as expand its service to our Flor de Bsatión neighborhood!

All in all, November was an exciting month at Starfish - and December is sure to have even more excitement with the holidays just around the corner!