I am trying to give a name to this day but adjectives like: special, memorable or fantastic are not quite right, they seem far too common for a day that definitely was not usual. In the end, I choose the words “surprise and relief” as they best describe my feelings and the day of 28 October 2016.
We left Villa San Antonio very early in the morning, heading to Tegucigalpa, just in time for the “Discovery Club Expo” organised by Glasswing. This event involved eight other charity projects from across Honduras and involved a science competition.
To be a teacher of a Discovery Club at primary school is no joke. We spent a lot of time looking for the right experiments to present at the competition. I must admit, I was not expecting the preparation and enthusiasm of the children of my club at Amilcar Rivera Calderón school.
A lot has been achieved during this month of volunteering - differences we noticed and differences we didn’t notice. It was only today that I realised that the differences were in front of me since the start.
At the beginning of the third circle, when the facilitators of Glasswing and Progressio asked me to prepare the kids for this competition, I felt completely out of my depth. At one point I even thought that it would have impossible. I never considered that my students, on the other hand, were more prepared for the competition then I was. Why? The answer is simple. The previous volunteer cycles have trained these kids very well, doing an amazing job and teaching them important values such as team-working, diligence, dedication and responsibility.
In the end, everything went smoothly, the work actually appeared easier than I thought and we had such a great time working all together on this project.
P.S.: Almost forgot… can you guess who won the competition?
Written by ICS volunteer Giovanni Caferra