Centro Conviven
Martiniano Leguizamón 2974
Phone 4686 5995
http://www.conviven.org.ar/
centroconviven@yahoo.com.ar
Today I visited Conviven. It took almost one hour to get there from the San Telmo area where I have been staying. It is near one of the poor "villas" of Buenos Aires called Ciudad Oculta. I heard about it through Insight Argentina, a division of Help Argentina.
Overall it looks like a good place to volunteer. I had a good feeling about the director, Valmir, shown in the photo below, and I heard positive things about him.
I also found out that he doesn't agree with Insight charging the backpackers to be volunteers. He said something like this ruins the spirit of volunteering. Right now as I understand it, Insight gives his center 100 dollars of each 300 they charge the people who sign up with them. If you are lucky enough to find this page in time you can save 300 dollars and contact the center directly. Some of the volunteers had paid the 300 dollars and some hadn't. To Insight's credit, one had gone though Insight, but she was given a scholarship so she didn't have to pay anything.
There were about 8 volunteers from countries such as Holland, Germany, England, Estonia and the USA. They all seemed to be enjoying their experience. During my visit today everyone was teaching English, which is the main focus of the volunteers. I was told that there weren't as many kids in the center today as there usually are.
Here are two volunteers preparing materials. More specifically, drawing clocks to practice telling the time.
In this classroom there were about four students and two volunteers. A lot better than in the public schools were one teacher might have 40 or more students!
Here is a computer room. One has Internet. The director told me he doesn't have enough people who speak Spanish well enough to teach so he can make more use of the room. I also heard a story that some US Embassy people visited the center and donated four computers. They were taking lots of publicity pictures and getting a lot of milage out of the kids, but there was a small problem. The computers they donated didn't work! I was also told they gave the kids a big bag which the kids thought was going to be full of goodies, but the bags only had few little things in them, one of which was a baseball cap with an American flag on it.
Some of the books.
Kids playing in the big recreation room downstairs. It is a big center with a lot of rooms.
A German volunteer painted up some of the inside walls.
More volunteers teaching English.
This one shows that the room has some sewing machines in it so the center can teach people how to sew.
A group pic of the volunteers.
From the street.
At Gibraltars Pub after a long day of volunteering! (and a long bus ride to San Telmo!)
