Volunteering with Telefonica of Peru
Telefonica has a big volunteering program here, and my boss invited me to participate in an event where we act as “big brothers/sisters” to some elementary school kids for an afternoon. I always enjoy stuff like that, so I signed up and spent the day volunteering last Friday.
We decorated our cafeteria like crazy and welcomed all the kids there with some free food and a quick announcement when they got off their school bus. I met my “little brother”, an 11 year old name Ãngel. I took him on a tour of our building and showed him where I work and all the other offices. He said his favorite subject is computer class, so it was cool to get to show him where our engineers work. After we finished my building we ran into two of my coworkers giving tours as well, so we joined with them and went to talk to all the people they know in another building. The kids had a warm welcome at each office and got a ton of Telefonica swag, I was actually kind of jealous…
Afterwards we all met back in the cafeteria and then boarded the bus to go to the “Parque de las Aguas”, a really nice park full of fountains in Lima. They let us loose in the park and I got to run around with the kids and get a little bit wet. We had a picnic lunch later in the grass, and the kids finally realized I was a foreigner. After that point they never stopped asking me to translate every word they could think of (including their names) into “American”. The day felt really short when we had to say goodbye and the kids went back to school on their bus. I had a ton of fun (and I hope the kids did too), even though somehow I managed to get sunburnt through the ever present clouds in Lima.
And finally, this will be in a Telefónica publication! Sorry for the picture of text.
