“Asfar, akhdar, ahmar or azraq?“…Come to enjoy our UNO game at the shelter! These are the first Arabic words I could learn while playing UNO games with the Arabic speaker boys of the shelter, corresponding to the colours yellow, green, red and blue. This is one of the recreational games I can do with the unaccompanied minors hosted at ‘Home for Hope’, but during these first months of my ESC project here I did many more.
In the afternoon, indeed, in the shelter I canspend my time with the boys by doing some entertaining activities. It is important for them to spend some hours by playing board games, creating crafts, playing football matches or ping pong. I remember how fun it was to create some bracelets with colored threads all together in the living room. The boys created the bracelets for themselves and they wore them, but some decided to give the bracelets to the officers as a gift. So nice! On another day, they painted some mugs with nail polish in the yard and they donated them to the teachers that every week come to the shelter to hold some lessons with them, like Greek, music therapy, cooking and sport lessons. Concerning cooking, during their cooking workshops in the kitchen they can learn Cypriot recipes and can tell us some recipes of their countries, and they are really excited to do that. Once, we also had an Italian cooking lessonand we prepared ‘pasta al forno’ together. Delicious!
Moreover, on the occasion of the celebration of some international days, more specific activities are planned. For example, for the celebration of the World Children’s Day on the 20th of November the boys prepared some wooden frames with the sentence ‘Thank you for your job’ written in all the languages that the boys speak. These frames were given as a gift to the officers and the staff of the headquarters, as a thanksgiving for the work they do every day for them. Then, to celebrate the Human Rights Day on the 10th of December, my ESC colleagues and I prepared with the boys a ‘Human Rights tree’. It was a tree made with a wooden support as a trunk, some green papers as leaves and some plastic bags as roots. Each boy should think about a human right of a special importance for him and write it down on the tree. This was a good moment to develop some thoughts with the boys and to speak about their dreams for the future.
Many other recreational and teaching activities were implemented with them during these months. Between these, also ‘movie nights’ with pop-corn and hot tea… What else?! Staying with the boys is the best part of my volunteering experience at the shelter. By doing activities and playing together (like playing football in the football field, where they overestimate my capability of playing by giving me the role of goalkeeper!)I can spend a lot of amusing time with them. I like so much to see them having fun together and laugh out loud, especially if they are not used to… This warms my heart.
