The orphanage ‘Hogar ama’

Every Thursday me and Ricardo take our boards with the boards of the project and visit the boys from 10 am to 11 am. Recently we had some reinforcement from two boys from the skate park. That meant two more boards and much more attention for the kids and a lot of fun for the skater boys. They would just stopped skating by themselves for an hour and give their knowledge to the potential future skaters of P.Z.

For me it’s a pleasure every time because the kids show a lot of interest in learning skateboarding. So every Thursday we have a short but lovely welcome just before they grab the boards and skate down to their concrete soccer field . The field has a roof which is lucky because the rainy season is already arriving. Most of the time there are 10 boys sharing the boards. First they struggled even to stand on the board, but from week to week they become more confident. It’s amazing to see how fast they can control the board for the first time. Skateboarding demands a lot of balance and control of the body. After 9 months I can tell the kids are at least able to push and have a lot of fun together while enhancing their abilities. Some kids even learned to make an Ollie.

In the beginning there were a lot of fights about the boards because normally there are more kids than boards. Now they went a step ahead: They gather together and share the boards in small groups.

After the great success with the kids there we decided to talk to the manager of the orphanage and asked him if we could bring some kids to the skate park for a few hours on one day at the weekend to give them the chance the increase there skateboarding by exploring the skate park of the project with a skateboard. So now we pick up some boys once every month to bring them to the skate park. There they can try to ride our ramps and are able to watch the guys from the park to see what people can do on a skateboard.

Last month we made a little contest with the help of the short-time volunteer Johann. He also picked up the kids from the orphanage so that they could watch the competition. They were really excited about that trip and had a great day. And they came in contact with the local skaters.

I’d like to work with this kids in the future if they can find new families in Perez.
On Thursday we will go to Hogar Ama for the first time after three weeks vacation. I’m looking forward to it. Probably some of the boys practiced a lot. Thanks to the donation of Johannes and Linda, some short-time volunteers, the boys have two boards on their own so that they can skate without us from now on.

Pura Vida Miriam