July in Puerto
The summer school is the biggest project fully organised by Casal Jove. It takes the whole year to prepare it, with a whole intensive month dedicated to its management and development and then another month for its actual execution. The monitores of Casal Jove get divided into 6 different schools, 3 in Puerto, 2 in Sagunto and 1 in Almardá, but that’s not enough people for the 500+ children that sign up for this so the city council has to employ about 50 more monitores. I got grouped together with two of my colleagues, one of them I spent the whole year with working on the teenagers sessions and one the one I helped make the big games. It was such a different context and experience compared to what I did until now, the escoleta is dedicated to children aged 3 to 11 and that’s a different age target than the one I focused on until now, but it was really fun, although intense, spending the whole day with them. I was very lucky to have been put into this school, not only because of the colleagues (old and new ones), but also because it’s the one nearest to the Casal Jove in Puerto so I spent a lot of time there too. Spending the whole year at the Casal has made it my home, I feel completely comfortable and I know my way around it, so every time there was something to be done there I was the go-to person. Being able to see the other people who work there, not just the monitores, daily was a blessing because I wasn’t ready to cutoff this place from my life yet, and exchanging a few words with anyone of them gave me so much joy and encouragement.
The Escola d’Estiu consists of a ton of activities: crafts, dances, small competitions, water games, movies and even beach days. The program that was developed throughout June was more or less a base, a guideline, but due to unexpected events, such as weather alerts, it was modified and adjusted. When it started it felt like a humongous event, but the days passed by in the blink of an eye and all of a sudden it was all over. I loved meeting new people through it, loved spending time with children and seeing the world through their eyes, loved having a solid role in the project and living up to it.
There are no words in the universe that could describe how much love and joy and appreciation and gratitude I felt throughout the whole year, I’ve built relationships that will last a lifetime and I now have a strong connection to a place that I didn’t even know existed last year. I hope that the next volunteers also have wonderful and life changing experiences and a great time here. With that I say goodbye and good luck, it was an honour sharing these magnificent stories.
