La Segunda Semana

We have now completed our second week here in Cali. This week, we have continued to work with the many kiddos at Oscar Scarpetta. Last week we mentioned that it was difficult for us to work with some of the other children because we would always get rushed by the older ones. We decided to set up a schedule, where every day that we are at Oscar Scarpetta we sit down for one hour towards the end of the day with the older children and help them with their english as well as learn additional spanish. We have started to see some improvements with the babies here. When we first started working with Salacunas ( the babies), several of them were at the age where they should be able to turn independently from their back to their stomach and vice versa or be able to sit independently; however, they were unable to perform theses tasks. As of this past week, those babies are getting stronger and have been able to roll independently and sit for short periods of time independently ( Sooo Exciting!!!!!!!). We are currently preparing a plan of care for the caretakers at the institution, which includes the developmental stages for children and specifc exercises/activities to perform with them to ensure progression of each stage. A psychology student and Speech Language Pathologist who work at the institution and are part of the institution's library committe have been working on improving the library at the institution. On Monday they held an event at Oscar Scarpetta's library in which they asked the children what kind of things they would like to see and do in the library. Anita and I both participated in this event and were there helping children read the books written in english.

This week we had the opportunity of meeting with the director of Chiquitines (the other orphanage that we will begin working at next week). Chiquitines is a slightly smaller orhanage than El Instituto de Oscar Scarpetta. In addition to working at Chiquitines, we will be working with the birthing mothers affiliated with this orphanage. The birthing mothers are taught how to make crafts and jewelry that are sold at Chiquitines to assist with buying more supplies and helping them develop a craft while there. We look forward to beginning to work with the kiddos at Chiquitines and continuning to see improvements with those at Oscar Scarpetta.