Club ACORN

For the past few months I've been volunteering my time to a local community center based in La Boca and Barracas neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. It's funded by ACORN an American based non-profit whose mission is providing local communities with a safe and educational place. The idea is to help teach the children at the center concepts of communication, relationships, and respect for one another as well as their own self. At our actual center we offer English classes for the younger students and adults, dance, music, and art classes for the children, after-school tutoring, and literacy courses for the adults. Everything is volunteer based, so the more volunteers the more we can provide for these communities. We have plans to improve the adult classes and introduce an exercise program as well computation classes. In addition we are working on providing a free psychological service, as many of the children come from troubled back-rounds and could the extra guidance. We hope to provide the families of this community services that are currently unavailable to them in hopes that it will brighten their futures.

As of know we have a solid group of kids who come regularly throughout the week to partake in the variety of weekly activities. The above photos are from the other day when we took advantage of the nice weather and traveled all together to a nearby park to play a friendly game of soccer (an obvious favorite). In the background you can see the Boca soccer stadium, which is one of the more popular teams in Argentina, and for the people of this community their everything. Limited to the goal I waited for the perfect opportunity to show the boys that girls can play too. About 15 minutes into play one of the boys felt confident enough to pass the ball back to me in goal (Just so you know I was stopping shots like a wall up until this point...). I decided to leave my 6x6 box and advance forward with the ball. Schooling one little kid after the next and suffering blow after blow to the shins I made it to the other side. I took one look at the goalie...shot and made it! I retreated back to my box with cheers from my teammates, never to advance again. I wasn't proud of myself for schooling 12 year old boys, but I feel like I broke down the barrier of boys being better than girls...probably not forever, but at least for a second. I couldn't help myself.