Hours 8am to 5pm Monday to Friday. Work full or part time. Volunteers will give classroom support to local women who take care of kids 6 months to 6 years and will provide more creative extra curricular activities too: ecological education, sports, dance, art, accompanying children on local excursions etc. We need creative mature and very responsible volunteers who love children!. Also we need techy volunteers to help us with web page maintenance.
Required Skills:
Basic understanding of Spanish. None of the local staff of familes undertsand English
Costs:
No admin costs. Volunteers receive lunch and snacks provided to children during the day. Local homestays can by arranged - from a fully equipped comfortable house USD$180 /month / person or more basic cheaper accomodation in centre
Contact Person:
Emma Donlan
Email:
(Note: email address is tripple protected from spammers.)
This project is an excellent example of a truly grassroots initiative, it is well run and administered. I have been involved in the project for the past 5 years. I am British and have lived in La Paz, Bolivia, for the past 11 years. This project is run and managed by local aymara women in the village of Mallasa about half an hour from the city centre of La Paz.
My role is voluntary too, helping with fundraising, mainly through friends and family back in UK and also by helping identify volunteers. We have only been working with volunteers in the past year of so and most of them have come by word of mouth, however, we now have 100 children in the nursery and we really do need some more hands! The experience for the local women and the volunteers to date has been very positive, so this is why I am now casting the net out further in order to actively seek more volunteers.We have just started up a web site and the volunteers we have right now are getting a blog up and running
I think this web site will give you most of the information you need but here are some more details...
There are no admin costs. This is a free programme and run by local women. We will need volunteers with initiative as we are not a professional volunteer organisation - our objective is to work with vulnerable local families first and foremost and we do not have the resources to direct all our energies into managing our volunteers. Therefore, whilst we will help you all we can, we really do need mature and responsible volunteers that can take care of themselves and need minimal hand-holding. There are local home stays available. Ball park costs of nice furnished shared house with DVD, TV,internet etc, 5 mins away from nursery is USD$180 / month / person but cheaper and much more basic options should be available with local families or in the city centre.
Mallasa is a semi rural village and has a very strong sense of community - perhaps the most enriching aspect of the experience of the volunteers to date has been living in this small community and getting a very real flavour of Aymara culture and participating in community activities. It is 30 mins by bus to the city but is a world away from the hustle and bustle of the city. To live surrounded by the mountains and with several places for trekking and exploring in the valley, I think it may offer a less "full on" city experience for some of your volunteers who would enjoy a more community based lifestyle.
The altitude in La Paz takes your breath away at first and you need to rest during the first days at 3.600 metres above sea level!!! La Paz has a bustling night life and if volunteers want to make the most of this they will have to factor in time and costs of transport if they live outside the city centre, which would have to be in taxi after 10pm ( about 3.50 GBP by taxi). There are small local shops but again supermarkets and other big shops are 30 mins away. Local people speak no Spanish ( this may be a pro if you want to improve your Spanish!)
Contact Details/ How to apply:
Write to me: Emma Donlan emmadonlan(AT)hotmail.com in either Spanish or English
Please send details about:
what motivates you to participate in this project
any ideas of how you could contribute to this project having read our web site
some background on your life so far education, experiences, travels, similar experience working with children
personal references from someone such as a teacher, past employer this is because you will be working with children an email address would be best so I can write to them directly
how long you can stay for
your level of Spanish
if you need help finding accommodation in la Paz
how much time you can give to the project e.g
how many hours/ days a week
I look forward to hearing from you.
If you need any more information, please do not hesitate to let me know.
Best wishes Emma
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