At Risk Children Dance for Social Change

It has been a month and a half since Enlaces project was first posted in GlobalGiving.  We started to raise funds for the program, but more important still: we started new friendships!

So this report aims to continue growing this friendship as any other would do: by getting to know us better! ...We are going to do our part, and please do yours! Send us your support also talking to your friends about us!  "Friendraising" is a great way to inject energy into our project...and into this kids' lives! 

One of the best gifts that GlobalGiving has given to Enlaces, is the possibility to get volunteers from HP to get to know us.  The panamanian staff members of Hewlett Packard have become our dearest friends and we are so much looking forward to keep on doing things with them.  Together with Nefthaly, the program coordinator and psychologist, they have launched a tutoring program on Saturdays, that focus on helping children with homework from other courses that they don't have time to finish during the week (We focus their weekdays' tutoring in Math and Language).

Our friends from SembrArte also organized a Sunday activity and together with the kids, painted a mural in one of the Santa Familia Building's walls.

The value of the month has been Empathy.  It is challenging to promote this in the group when some of the kids live surrounded by negative role models. But they have attended workshops leaded by the program's psychologist to build the capacity to feel share experiences to recognize and share feelings that are being experienced by other human being in positive ways.

Dance lessons have included the use of sticks to create stories that could express the movement of their bodies and rhythm of the music in a free and spontaneous manner.  The children also participated in a special class that a group of professional dancers gave them on Aerial Dance. It was amazing for them to see what this artists are able to do, and the potential that modern dance has when hard work, discipline and creativity combine in stage!

Students and teachers practice with much dedication the presentation for the end of the year, playing various scenes of real-life situations with a touch of humor.  They also formed part of the recording of a TV show where they give advice to other children on how to conserve the environment.  The latter presented a great challenge for them, since they needed to put into practice their projection before the cameras and good communication.

So our friends...these are some news from the Enlaces day to day, and we hope that they encourage you to keep supporting this program, helping all of us in Calicanto to shape the leaders of tomorrow!!

Thank you for your friendship!!