All kids have the the right to have dreams… and so do adults!
Short background
Whilst spending some time in Nicaragua (a poor country in Central America), we decided to try and make a difference. So we started volunteering in the local village where we were living at the time (Masatepe). We were passing by this community every day, either running, walking or by tuk-tuk (mototaxi as they call it in Nicaragua). It is a very poor area and most of the people live in what we would call sheds, though most of them now have running water and electricity and maybe most importanly, they have food on the table (the climate is perfect for growing vegetables and fruit year around).
The locals were always happy and smiling and we made sure to chat with them every now and then (Spanish language as more or less no one there speaks English). It was pretty obvious to us they there were living under poor conditions and that got us thinking about how we could possibly have a positive impact on their lives.
Making a difference!
We noticed that there was a local school close to where we were staying and initiated a discussion with our landlady at the time and it turned out that one of her workers were married to the head teacher (small world). We agreed and scheduled a meeting with her to discuss our ideas. At the time, all the kids were on a long summer break but she went to ask the parent if we could do “summer classes” for the kids as she liked our ideas of offering a combination of maths, English and the concept of visions and goals.
Said and done, a few days later it was confirmed! Over a period of approximately two months we were teaching at the school 1-2 times per week. Teaching kids in the age group of 7-11 is nothing we had any previous experience with so we had to dig right in to planning these classes (every class was two hours).
Maths, English but primarily letting them dream BIG!
Very early on we decided to focus on dreams and goals and made sure these kids got the opportunity to do so. We felt was especially important to inspire these kids to dream as the culture in Nicaragua is more of “you become what your parents are” and there is nothing you can do about it. So if your parents are poor farmers, so will you, no need for kids to dream..! We also wanted to incorporate both maths and english to the classes as we consider these subjects very important.
During every class we decided do something linked to dreams and goals and that was not easy. Just getting these young kids to understand the importance of having dreams and how to do it was a challenge. You have to remember, many of them have no internet and no mobiles (not even in their families!) so very limited exposure to the outside world as not even their school had one single computer!
Our ultimate goal was to create individualized inplasted vision boards for all of the kids so that they could look at them every day till they had achieved all of their dreams and yes, we knew we were in for a challenge…
First we had to get these kids to dream big (same as we want you to do when joining us taking the first step towards your new life: click here). We did this by using magazines (which we provided as the kids nor the school did not have any) to get inspiration and cut out pictures for their vision boards or just us brainstorming with them and writing down stuff they could dream of and of course, NO LIMITATIONS (kids are great at this so us adults should really learn from them)!
After almost two months, we were pretty happy with the result and what the kids had acomplished!
This is one of the vision boards we did together with one of the pupils and it’s quite humbling when one sees what they are dreaming about as many things are stuff we (in the western world) take for granted, like a washing machine! The other part is of course also to see how BIG they dream in comparison to their current reality (living in a “shed”), the sky is the limit!
We will try to keep in contact with these kids and we truly believe that for some of them, their vision boards will change their lives dramatically and ultimately let them live life on their terms!
Action points for YOU to take now!
- Make sure you have your own vision board!
- Dream BIG, have clear goals in your goal sheet!
- The purpose of living is giving – take action now and make a difference in someones life today!
Serving others is a win-win, both for the giver (who recieves appreciation) and the reciever (who feels tremendous gratitude) – let’s all make a difference in this world, Share, Dare and Care!
– Jakob
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