22092017_solidaridadtetuan

Five students from the University of Navarra and one from the Public University of Navarra have participated this summer in a program of the Dari Foundation in Tetouan, Morocco, which takes in street children, some of them with severe disabilities.

Over the course of two weeks, the university students worked with about twenty children between the ages of 6 and 14, working with them on self-esteem and activities to help them develop individual initiative and autonomy.

They are Silvia Cañada Erburu, 2nd year of Sociology at UPNA; and the students of the University of Navarra Paloma de la Paz Romero (4th year of Medicine), Fátima Ruiz Fuster (graduated in Pedagogy and student of Master's Degree in research in Social Sciences), Ana Bañón framework (2nd year of Pedagogy and Early Childhood Teaching), Ainhoa Herrando Oroz (3rd year of Psychology) and Inés Motilva Sanz (3rd year of ISSA School of Management Assistants).

"In the work with these children, we emphasized the effort they put into overcoming challenges and their participation in the proposed dynamics," says Fatima Ruiz Fuster. Another of the objectives was to work on the values of gratitude and forgiveness, a task they achieved thanks to the use of dolls as extrapolators of feelings. "During all this time, it was essential to teach the children to think and to use the emotional knowledge in order to promote resilience".

The backbone of all the work with the students was the cooperative activities cooperative activitiesThe backbone of all the work with the students were the cooperative activities, through which they sought to increase the children's ability to get along with each other. These included a trust workshop, a water gymkhana and a costume workshop. goal "Another more elaborate activity consisted of trying to get them to cut out and write on a sheet of paper what they wanted to be when they grew up, and how they saw themselves in the future, with the aim of working a little on decision-making and motivation, because most of them had leave self-esteem and little self-confidence," explains the pedagogue.

A successful Service-Learning experience

Some of these experiences were later captured on paper, thus promoting linguistic and corporal expression. "At the beginning they did not respond much to our initiative, but little by little they became involved in the activities, calling our attention...", says Fatima Ruiz, current student of Master's Degree in research in Social Sciences (MICS).

This work of volunteer activities, which sought to Education in values, is framed within the Service Learning (ApS), a methodology through which the learner is involved in the improvement of the community, while developing a series of skills and competencies.