Written by: Ate Charmain Tan, Vice President External
Another visit to Kuya Center for Street Children and seeing these children proved worthwhile as these children do not get a lot of opportunity to experience these kinds of activities. Kuya Center provides a home for the street children where they feel accepted and respected. It empowers the children through faith and religion with the guidance from the Luzon Association of Religious Brothers. Though the years we have visited the center we have seen the children become more discipined. Today was the first birthday celebration of Baby Jesse. Mommy Shimy wanted to celebrate her son’s birthday by sharing her blessings with the children of Kuya Center. She was joined by her friends and family as the children welcomed us to their home.
The volunteers introduced themselves to the children by saying their names in their loudest voice. The volunteer with the softest voice had to do a short dance as a consequence. Mommy Shimy ended up having the softest voice and she and baby Jesse did the Baby Shark dance. The kids were grouped into five and the volunteers joined the groups. They were able to get to know one another as they talked about their dreams in life. After getting to know the kids in their groups it was time for the first activity. The first game was Spell It Out Challenge. Teams formed a straight line facing the same direction. We described a profession and the teams had to guess the correct answer and spell the word using their bodies. The challenging part was the answers all had many letters so teams had to make sure they had the correct answer. For instance for the profession doctor, the correct answer was “physician”. Everyone laughed as it took them a while to figure out the correct answer as their first guess was doctor. Some of the other words were politician, shoemaker, and the most meaningful of all profession: being a volunteer. The volunteers directed their teams and made sure the kids had the correct letter. The game was tied between three groups but in the final round Group 4 won the game.
The second activity was Fish Be With You. Each team was given a bilao full of paper cut sea creatures. The teams had to blow the sea creatures until all papers were out of the bilao. Everyone had so much fun as they blew their hearts out. For the second round, since the sea creatures were already on the floor around the bilao, the teams had to blow the papers back into the bilao. This proved to be more challenging as it was harder to put them back in. Some kids couldn’t resist but to use their hands and put the papers back into the bilao. As we were teaching the children to learn to follow rules, the team that did not use their hands won the game.
For the next activity, we watched the bubble show by the Bubble Man Mario. He started out with small bubbles then built his way up to bigger bubbles. He then made rows of connected bubbles and dragged them across the kids. Everyone shouted as they tried popping all the bubbles. The kids laughed and jumped trying to reach for the bubbles. The bubble man then made life sized bubbles and asked the kids to go inside. Everyone took turns going inside. Some of them made funny faces as they were inside.
After watching the bubble show we played a final game Shape Me Up. Teams held hands and formed a circle. We would give a shape and teams had to form the shape without breaking their link. Some of the shapes were star, heart, square and crown. Some of the teams were very creative as they formed the shapes really fast.
After all the fun everyone got to enjoy their early dinner. Four of the adorable kids from Kuya Center led the prayer. The kids ate so much as they got second serving of rice. We then gave out prizes to the winners of the games. We also gave gifts to the kids who did a performance of the songs “Pasok Mga Suki” and “Alaala”. All the kids then got school supplies as gifts from Ate Shimy. We sang a Happy Birthday song for Baby Jesse with his two-tiered cake. The kids hugged and thanked everyone for sharing their blessings with them.
