Los niños Trabajandores* R&B

Meet some of the working children, niños trabajandores, of Sucre Bolivia.

Raina – The kids on the picture are all siblings. The first boy on the left is Juan Paulo, then it is Beatrice and next is Grover (pronounced Grober). They live very far from the plaza central and everyday after school take the micro by themselves to town.

The children come from very poor families and have to work every day to help their family budget. They are always selling something, whether it food for pigeons or sweets. Many shine shoes.

In Sucre we volunteer to help the children sell a magazine called Inti. It is published by an organization called Biblioworks. Every day we help them by talking to foreigners in English and just by being there so people notice. Sometimes the people buy the magazine only because we are there! The kids are very nice and when we have a chance me and my brother would play tag with them. There are mostly five or six kids at the plaza and Juan Paulo, Beatrice and Grover are always there.

I now have a best friend from the kids. Her name is Maria Isabel. She is 10 and she is not shy. I teach her English and we play tula, tag, after we sell our magazines. I am looking forward to seeing her every day.

Boryan – The magazine that these kids are selling cost only three bolivianos, less than 50 cents, and they get half of what they make.

Imagine you are one of these small kids, carrying several magazines with a little card telling about who you are and what you are doing. Got the image? Now remember how much these magazines cost. Only 50 cents, less than half a dollar. With all of this in your head, start walking. You stop at every bench. Before having a chance to even show your card and say a couple of words, people shake their head. Moving along you spot a tourist and get all exited thinking that they will definitely buy a magazine, but they don’t.

How would that make you feel? How does this make me feel every day while I help the children? Well, I thought that selling magazines would be easy. We would be waltzing around handing them out left and right. Once we actually started helping and I saw that most people didn’t buy the magazine, it shocked me. I know that that 50 cents can go a longer way in Bolivia then in the US, but people can spare a few coins, right?

Don’t get me wrong, a lot of people do help, but a lot don’t. For the week we have been volunteering many magazines have been sold. The kids make a little extra, which allows them to eat, buys school supplies and support their families. This program is really helping these children and their families with their everyday needs.

What I took from helping the kids is that there are many people out in the world that need help and that I can help even though I am only 12. From now on hopefully we can volunteer in every place we visit.

If you want to help these children you can donate money to BiblioWorks. Not only do BiblioWorks help the working children of Sucre, but  the organization ‘has been building libraries, supplying books and training librarians in the poorest communities of Bolivia since 2005’.