By Nathalie Goodings, YES 2013-2014, Suriname

About a month after our return, the YES ’14 alumni from Suriname decided to work with the Maria Hoeve orphanage. We choose this orphanage because more than 70% of the children in this orphanage had been sexually abused, and we wanted to show these children that they are thought of in our community. 

So, on our planned day, I went with five of my fellow YES alumni to the orphanage, where we divided the children into groups of three, with two alumni helping each group. We got to know each other by playing games, like “Name Around the World,” a game in which you link all the letters of your name to a word with a positive meaning that describes you. For example:

Nice

Adventurous
Tender
Helpful
Amazing
Lovely
Intelligent
Elegant

We played this game with the older children who could read and write in order to help them reflect positively on themselves. We saw how necessary this was when, during the game, one of the children said, “I don't really know what nice things to write about myself.” That was when we realized that because of what they had been through, most of the children in the orphanage had a really negative self image. After that, we were especially glad we had come to play with them, and we held a drawing competition and played other Surinamese children games.

This was our first project as a group and we learned a lot from it. The staff  at the orphanage were also very happy that we went and helped out with the children, and they said they hope to be involved with more alumni activities in the future. For us, seeing the children smile was the most important part of the day!