Goal: To spend one afternoon in Caritas taking care of children.
Learning Outcome: Recognise and consider the ethics of my choices and actions.
Before
Currently, I am feeling very nervous about this activity. My task is to go to Caritas, a daycare center for children whose family have economic problems, and spend my afternoon there feeding, playing, and helping the children with their homework. While this does not sound like a very hard task, I have never been too good with children, so I am worried that I will not be very useful to the people working at Caritas. However, I will make sure to give it my all while I’m there. Let’s hope everything goes well!
During
My Caritas experience was much better than what I had anticipated! When I got there, I had to help set up a table and feed the children as they came. After that, I was assigned a child and had to spend the rest of my afternoon with her. She was a 6th grader and, throughout the first half of the afternoon, I helped her with her maths homework. This was possibly the most challenging part of my experience, as she was studying things I was not entirely familiar with due to me never having gone to a spanish school. Because of this, I made some mistakes when teaching her how to solve problems, but I ended up correcting them and everything turned out well in the end.
After that, the girl and I played chess together, and she even made up some games of her own! She was a very imaginative child, and it was very fun to spend the afternoon with her.
After
All in all, this CAS experience turned out much better than expected. It led me to truly consider the impact my presence had on the children I met and their afternoon. These young people have not had the opportunities I’ve had but, thankfully, the presence of institutions like Caritas, with the help of volunteers like myself, are there to help them succeed in life. If it hadn’t been for my actions, this girl might have not been able to complete her maths homework, for example, and I wouldn’t have been able to face a new challenge and find out more about the lives of children who I may have never met otherwise. While it was not the ideal Service experience for me (I prefer getting involved with environmental matters), my afternoon in Caritas was still very personally useful and enriching, and I am glad to have participated in it.
Ainhoa Does CAS! 