Viva Quito

We flew into Quito on Monday from the small (and fun!) city of Loja. Quito is a sprawling city of about 2 million people. It is set in the Andes and we are at 8000 feet. It has been quite a busy week visiting all sorts of Rotary sponsored schools and community projects, as well as being hosted by Rotarians for lunch and dinner every day.

Our activities began with a visit to see a ¨Brain Gym¨ project in action at Escuela Carlos Aguilar (sponsored by the Fundacion Educando al Ecuador). Carlos Aguilar was an elementary school of about 500 students. Brain gym is a short series of exercises which help activate the brain for learning. We visited a modern, and well-equipped medical clinic that served everyone in the community no matter the level of income. Then, we visited to a school which serves rural preschool children, who up until its opening, were often left at home alone while parents worked in the fields or with livestock.

We had a beautiful lunch of Seco de Chivo (a favorite plato tipico Ecuatoriano) atop a hill overlooking the valley below sponsored by Gonzalo Rueda and his lovely wife. It was a magestic setting. Lunch was followed with an interview of the GSE Team by Rosalia Arteaga, a one-time Vice President of Ecuador. This will be shown on her television program called Cara a Cara con Rosalia next Sunday...so check out the programming for Ecuador if you want to see us ¨sweat¨ through interviews in Spanish! After lunch, we visited a newly constructed school, built on what used to be a landfill in a very poor area of Quito that will open to students as soon as furniture and appliances are ready.

On Wednesday we visited a school called Ninos de Maria in the La Comuna neighborhood, another of the most impoverished areas of the city. This program was impressive for several reasons. Students were fed in the morning and at lunch, and were kept at school to continue learning and receiving services about three hours longer than other schools each day. The school had programs for parents to learn literacy and parenting skills. They had an incentive program to get parents involved in the school and the special programs by offering them tickets to use at an onsite store. Lastly, there were sewing machines for classes on vocational training, and a classroom full of computers for teacher training. Plans were being made for carpentry and artisan training programs. We capped off Wednesday with a visit to the Ecuatorial line and the ël Mitad de Mundo¨Monument. We took turns straddling the Ecautorial line and took amusing pictures...check out the pictures on Picasa!

On Thursday we took a short trip to the Parque Carolina, the ¨Central Park¨ of Quito, to see a refuge for teenage boys. The Batan Foundation, partnering with Rotary and the City, uses a building within the park grounds to serve as a home for as many as 8 boys at a time. Since they cannot house all the boys who live on the streets, the refuge, called COVi (Center for the Option of Life) feeds up to 40 additional boys a day. COVi offers counseling, a clean change of clothes, and a laundry facilites. The boys living at the shelter attend school in the evening and are encourgaged to complete their high school education. Following this, we headed over to the offices of Ecuador´s national newspaper, Hoy, for interviews. The article should be in this Sunday´s paper (we feel so popular!).

We want to thank our host families here in Quito and all the Rotary Clubs who worked together to give us tours of the city each day. We saw a lot, learned a lot and ate a lot... Thank you!