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Georgina Clarke left the UK in need of a career break and on the recommenation of a friend volunteered with JUCONI for 5 months. “One of my activities was to spend “special time”, with a nine-year-old boy called Jonathan, who lived in Trinitaria, the most deprived area of Guayaquil. Jonathan has had an unstable life, being passed between his mother and father and physically abused by various family members. I expected to find a young boy with the life knocked out of him, but Jonathan won’t be knocked down, he is pretty unruly and as cool as they come. What became immediately apparent was that Jonathan was not used to individual attention and asked over and over again “do I have the gringa all to myself?” Not surprisingly he seemed to find it very hard to trust people or show any sort of affection towards them, and especially towards females. I certainly had some difficult times with Jonathan, when he was totally uncooperative, antagonistic or uninterested. However when looking at the overall picture the time we had together seems to have had various positive effects on him which I feel has made it a worthwhile venture Above all I think he benefited in his self-esteem from having someone to give him personal attention twice a week.”

“I expected to find a young boy with the life knocked out of him, but Jonathan won´t be knocked down” - Georgina Clarke

Ole Meier-Hahn came to JUCONI after graduating and worked with us from September 2004 to March 2005. I came to Guayaquil without really knowing how I could help JUCONI. As I didn’t hold any professional qualifications e.g. social work or therapeutic work, I thought I would be spending the majority of the time helping out in the office. I was therefore surprised when I was integrated into the field work from the start. My role was to help with the education of a selection of children who were on the programme. The families JUCONI work with are often quite large and therefore the educators attention is taken away from working with individual children. To help my team I started off by keeping the younger children in the families occupied. Little by little I was given more responsibility, finally developing and implementing the same techniques as the educators themselves, helping with the educational plans and activities for the children.

“I learned many things and over time my confidence grew to help and support the children” – Ole Meier-Hahn

During my time my team (many thanks to Gabriel, Erika and Eduardo! – not just for their help with the work but for their friendship as well) helped me by sharing their knowledge and experiences. I learned many things – techniques as well as concepts – and over time my confidence grew to help and support the children with their cognitive and the emotional skills. In the end my concerns, that my lack of experience, the language limits and the cultural differences would prevent me from having a positive effect, were wrong.

I am very grateful to all the staff at JUCONI who with their continuous help and patience never made me feel like a stupid “gringo” but like a valuable part of the team.