Last week I cleansed my soul with a spot of volunteering at a great little project out in the sticks of Northern Ecuador. Set in an old convent, in stunning grounds, with a huge Volcano as a backdrop, Juvilus is an Orphanage for kids with HIV.
It`s an amazingly well set up place, run by a Catholic Priest who spends every hour dedicated to these kids and giving them a good, healthy life. It`s incredibly well funded, the kids are surrounded by games, toys, fresh food, computers with internet connections and much more. They are a really amazing bunch of kids with ages ranging from 6 months to 17 years old. They put Western kids to shame in terms of manners and how they look after each other, clean up, help out and generally by having consistently positive attitudes, it was pretty amazing to see at times.
My role for the week was just to help out as and where necessary, so there was lots of cleaning, washing, folding clothes, helping out with cooking and playing football/basketball. It was a tough week with early starts, long days and some difficult times where being a Gringo within such a tight group was challenging to say the least, but i`m glad I stopped and helped out. The hardest part was definitely saying goodbye at the end of the week.
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