The amazing niños of Villa Ticca

  Quito, Ecuador
Friday, January 9, 2009

Villa Ticca is a day care centre set up by two Dutch women because they came to Quito in the hope of volunteering with kids and found terrible facilities and conditions for the kids of south Quito. The kids (aged 1-5) have to come from deprived backgrounds to qualify. They come in themorning around 8.30 and leave either 1.30 or 4.30. While they are there they get fed LOTS..breakfast, lunch and loads of healthy snacks. They also begin teaching them basic skills. Villa Ticca also helps the families of the Villa Ticca children by paying a proportion of their rent and helping with healthcare costs, on our last day we visited some families and saw that this really is so necessary. On this visit we went with a bag of sugar, rice, salt and a bottle of milk and oil for each family. Some of the families did not have their own kitchen or bathroom (explaining the lack of toilet training, or nappies, in some of the kids), some were cared for by relatives because their parents had died or left them.  They all lived in terrible, extremely poor conditions. Both of us were completely choked up for most of the day, especially as we had got to know the children and couldnīt believe that such happy little things lived that way. One of the familes lived up a massive hill in an extremely dangerous area, the father of the family only earned $80 a month and their home cost $45 per month for one room for a whole family. One of the sons, steven, was ill but they couldnīt afford the $20 for the doctor. So so sad. We had an amazing experience working with the kids and staff of Villa Ticca. The kids are all beautiful and we fell in love with every one of them, even the ones who clearly had problems at home and were very naughty most of the time as a result. They threw us a party on our last day where groups 1 and 2 made Jill a present and groups 3 and 4 made Hev a present... so cute! We got given lots of hugs!


In our time there we also got to be a part of the christmas celebrations which was amazing! They put on a christmas play, which was completely chaotic and adorable. The parents then did a dancing competition which we were the judges of. Was such a nice thing to be a part of and it was great to meet all the parents of the children. We felt like celebrities as all the parents were bringing their kids over to take a photo with us.





From Villa Ticca we also learned a lot various Ecuadorian ways, including the tradition of singing happy birthday to someone and them then shoving their face into their birthday cake!

WE LOVE VILLA TICCA!