One of the biggest aims is to free the children/teenagers of the situation they are living in. Meaning to get them away from the street or from the relative/neighbour who is abusing them. We try to make the children/teenagers forget the behaviour they had in the streets (steeling, not caring for themselves (e.g. consuming drugs), being rude) and learn values like respect, responsibility and honesty and how to treat others.

There are two different types of homes:
-The ambulatory house: The kids get there receive lunch, participate in various workshops (e.g. sports, arts, "who am I", "personal growth"), receive psychological support and then go back home. The aims of the ambulatory house is to keep them away from the street, prevent that they prostitute themselves, take drugs and in most of the cases to motivate them to start a more serious process in the permanent home.

-The permanent home: The teenagers live there. The process takes 9 months divided in 3 levels. After finishing they are sent back to their families or to other relatives.They receive the same attention as in the ambulatory home, just more intense. There live between 10 and 20 children.
In Bogotá right now are 2 houses of each type.

The volunteer will stay in the ambulatory house or the permanent home more or less 8 hours each day (e.g. from 8 to 4 or from 10 to 6) and most of the time he/she will work along with the regular staff, accompanying the kids in their daily life or do things like take them to the hospital if they are sick or have a appointment there.In addition it is always great for the teens when the volunteer himself offers some workshops, according to his or her talents. Could be sports, dancing, yoga, teaching English, music, handcrafts, arts, games...Moreover, it often helps if the volunteers just participates in the workshops to motivate the kids or just talks to them if they are sad, or want to go back to the street.

Male or female 18 to 27. The volunteer must have the ability to deal and work with children & teenagers taking part in a series of training workshops and micro-businesses. The volunteer must be flexible, open -minded, social, patient and creative with a lot of sense of humour. The more authority one has, the better.

This project is located in a central area of Bogotá

Host family outside the project