Casa Búho was lucky enough to receive a very special visit. It was Andrea El Malouf, an Educational Psychologist with more than 12 years of experience in the field. She is part of Azulado Ecuador, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to prevent child abuse. On the other hand, there is Xavier Conde Frías (Spain), a philologist, writer, and among many other things, he has his own publishing house.
In short, truly outstanding people.
They traveled from Quito, for many hours, just to get to know the project. A thousand thanks for that! We went to Casa Búho, located in the parish of Machalilla (Manabí), to work with the children who regularly attend the afternoon program.
During the read-aloud session, Xavier read us his own stories. It was a very interesting experience, since we rarely have the opportunity to hear a text in the voice of the person who wrote it :) and to be in the same room.
Then, Andrea continued the session with a super fun activity. They played and laughed a lot. Afterward, during creativity time, we drew our dreams, and things came out that Andrea was able to interpret and use to create an analysis of that group of children.
And to top it all off, three mothers were selected for a talk about how to better understand certain behaviors of their children, development by stages, and some additional insights that Andrea shared with the búho moms.
It was a wonderful afternoon, full of beautiful and good things. With Andrea and Xavier we began talking about how much can be done for this community. We discussed everything from workshops for teachers, for parents, special sessions with the children, dental brigades, donations of materials and books through private schools in the capital, to the production of books (at low cost) so that the children of Machalilla can have their own little books at home and continue reading. We started dreaming so much… This visit from these two great people has undoubtedly been one of the best things to happen to Casa Búho in 2017.
Owl hugs,
V.