It’s a great event, giving you chance to stock up on all the fair trade products you could possibly shake a stick at.

While you browse Christmas ornaments, gifts and cards being sold by various South American charities you can listen to live music and eat some great food.

The fair is open from 12 noon to 8pm and entrance is £3. Hope to see you there!

Nearest Tube - Hyde Park Corner and Victoria station

Click here for a map

The beautiful cards, made from 100% recycled paper and flower petals, have gone on sale in covent Garden, central London.

All the profits from the sale of the cards finance the health, education and social programmes CENIT runs to help underprivileged families in Quito, particularly working children.

Some of the high school children who attend classes at CENIT help to produce the cards at a highly successful card workshop run by an artist at the centre.

All the scrap paper from CENIT is recycled on site and processed into a beautiful, high-quality paper that is used to make the cards.

A selection of designs are available to buy at St Pauls Church in Covent Garden, which is in the main market area.

Entry to the luxury venue will be £15, of which £5 will go to Sonrisa. This will be a great fundraiser, not to mention a fab night out for all.

Entry is by guest list only but anyone can get on the list. If you think you might go (even if you’re not sure) please email your and your friends names to guestlist@alphaparties.com by 5pm on the day. Or you can email Sonrisa a few days before and we’ll put you and your friends on the list.

We hope you can make it - should be a great event.

We’ll be meeting from 4:30pm onwards near Waterloo and would love to see you there!

It will be a great opportunity to meet other people who have spent time in Ecuador, and to be involved in continuing to support CENIT back in the UK.

If you would like to come, please email info@sonrisa.org.uk and we’ll send you the address of the event.

Hope to see you there!

We enjoyed an authentic Ecuadorian dinner at El Rincón Quiteño - patacones, ceviche, churrasco the lot! It was great to see everyone and we hope more ex-volunteers will make it to our next reunion - details to follow!

If so, please come along to the Sonrisa reunion in London on Saturday 31st March.

All ex-CENIT volunteers are welcome, as are other supporters of CENIT and Sonrisa.

We’ll be meeting at Highbury & Islington tube stop (Victoria Line) at 6:30pm on Saturday and the plan is to go for some food, then later drinks and dancing along Upper Street. If you’re running late you’ll find us in the Wetherspoons near the station (come out, turn right and it’s a few doors along) until 7pm. You can also join us later - send us an email if you need a contact telephone number so you can find us.

The more the merrier; if you’d like to come for dinner let us know so we can book a suitably-sized table.

See you there!

The substantial donation was the result of a highly successful fundraising event - The Rhythms of Latin America Festival - held by DLA at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.

Supporters of Sonrisa (Hazel, Maya and Laura) receive a symbolic cheque from Mariangela of DLA.

DLA chose to donate the profits of the festival to Sonrisa so the money collected could go directly towards helping children at the Centre for the Working Girl (CENIT) in Quito.

A member of DLA had seen first hand the valuable work carried out at the centre, and was determined to offer aid to the charity.

The donation made by DLA will go largely towards the paying the salaries of the local teachers and support staff who work at CENIT.

Money will also go towards buying new resources for street outreach work and covering the costs of a nutrionist, so that the meals in the school canteen are as healthy as possible.

Sonrisa would like to take this opportunity to extend its heartfelt thanks to DLA for its most generous donation.

Between 40 and 50 volunteers work at the centre at any one time, supporting CENIT’s 35 permanent Ecuadorian staff. Without the continuous flow of new volunteers, the centre would struggle to keep all of its programmes operating, particularly the Street Outreach scheme.

CENIT recognises the value of its overseas volunteers and with this in mind has introduced a new application process for individuals wishing to volunteer at CENIT. Future volunteers will now be required to fill out an application form well in advance of their arrival in Quito, to ensure they are matched to a suitable programme at CENIT.

“Each day we working not just for our children and families in need, but also to give the best experience possible to our volunteers,” explains volunteer co-ordinator Betty España.

CENIT relies heavily on the work of overseas volunteers.

“We really want our volunteers to to feel comfortable, useful and pleased with the work they’re carrying out,” adds Betty. “We want them to feel they sure that they are offering a good service to the children and their families – that way the volunteers will have a good experience at CENIT.”

“We’re now working with an application form that CENIT volunteers must fill out and send back at least a month before they come,” says Betty. “It’s ideal if they can send it back even earlier as this will give the future volunteer a greater range of options for working.”

Once the volunteer co-ordinators have received the form, they will go through it with the aim of finding a compatibility between the skills the volunteer has and the needs of the different programmes at CENIT. If accepted, the volunteer will be sent a timetable and information about the type of work he or she can expect to be doing.

Betty stresses that although she will endeavour to place volunteers in the programmes that will most interest them, she has also to consider the needs of the centre. “We hope our volunteers will be flexible and willing to adapt to the needs of the work,” she says.

CENIT’s volunteer co-ordinators believe that this revised volunteer admissions process will be beneficial both the volunteers and to the children and families CENIT helps.

“The aim is that we never have volunteers who feel useless or who don’t have the skills to carry out the work effectively,” says Betty. “By bringing together a pool of volunteers who are more qualified and better prepared, we can make sure each of our volunteers leaves having had a highly positive experience.”

Every year the centre organises popular summer camps for children of the local Camal market, providing educational and recreational activities for children who can only dream of going on a summer holiday.

This year CENIT welcomed a total of 80 children through its doors for its summer camps, with two fortnight sessions running with 40 children each.

The camp took place in CEA, a large classroom in the Camal market.

Children took classes in science, art, PE, maths, geography and self-esteem.

Right: the children colour maps in geography class. Photo © Rebecca Mills

“It went amazingly well,” said Tabs Veale, one of the volunteers at CENIT. “Each class was the responsibility of one volunteer to organise,” she explains, “and at the end of the two weeks we had a demonstration to the parents of the work, presented by the children.”

“There was work on the walls, a rendition of our favourite song ‘estaba la famillia sapo!’ (’there was a frog family’) and a huge cake! I think all adults in the room where very proud, especially us.”

The volunteers worked hard to establish a routine with the children, as this is an element many of them lack in their sometimes turbulent lives.

“Each day started, after a song or two, with actions,” says Tabs.

“That was followed by three classes, washing hands, a small snack, (fruit, or a boiled egg or cake on Fridays) and a finishing song.”

Left: volunteers establishing a hand-wash routine before children are given snacks.

Basic hygiene procedures were promoted through such routines and in the science classes at camp. Photo © Rebecca Mills

Tabs says all the classes were interesting and successful. Here she summarises some of the ‘highlights’.

Science
The children grew grass in egg shells (Egg heads) with very impressive decorated holders for them! They were also taught some basic hygiene and diet information, as the diet here is often a lot of rice, bread, carbohydrates and a lot of sweets. The basic dental hygiene was demonstrated by using teeth in coke and water, and comparing what happened to them. They spent one afternoon exploring the five senses with some fun experiments.

Art
This class included lots of fun projects, including making maracas, finger puppets, paper chains. As well as black and coloured wax crayon pictures. These were made with a layer of colour under a layer of black which was scraped away to create a picture. They had a great time and all the creations were very impressive. They were displayed and taken home on the last day.

PE
The kids really enjoyed getting out and playing. The older ones where a bit more challenged with things like volleyball, while the younger ones settled with simple catch games. The very popular games included jumping a rope that went round in a circle on the floor, the result looking a bit like a circular Mexican wave, and trying to knock over a large (sealed) water bottle with homemade bean bags, while someone tried to guard the bottle.

Self esteem
This class was actually very calming! The kids had to say nice things about the other children or just information about themselves and others, such as their family, favourite food etc. They were asked to talk to another child, ask questions and talk in front of the group. There were also lots of games, in teams or partners, for example twister and snakes and ladders, which encouraged them to play together.

Geography
Work in this class centred around making a globe. This was done with paper maché, paint, and cut out coloured paper in the shape of continents. We had an abundance of foreign volunteers from lots of countries, so we also had a source of more anecdotal information. The children learnt about seasons (there are only two in Quito), and flags from all over the world. By the end the walls where covered with flags, pictures and globes.

“The centre places a special emphasis on helping girls and their mothers to acquire a valuable skill as a distressingly large proportion of the adult women in the girls’ families are subject to abuse and degradation because they have no money or means of their own to escape such a life,” explains CENIT’s director Hermana Jacqueline.

CENIT runs workshops in sewing, leather crafts, baking and jewellery making, among others. As well as learning practical skills, the girls and women are helped to develop a strong belief in themselves and their capabilities.

As the end of a school year drew to a close, CENIT workshop leaders reflected on the year’s successes:

Leather work for girls (clases de cuero)

“At the moment there are eight girls (aged between 13 and 15) in the Clase de Cuero all working between 9am and 12pm, Monday to Thursday. The girls work hard each day to make the wallets, belts, bags and bracelets that are then sold to give them a monthly salary. This month has been successful as we had several orders from Europe. Three were from ex volunteers who now, back home, saw that CENIT products could easily be sold, in their old primary schools for example. Sonrisa also ordered a selection of our products to sell at the recent Latin American Rhythms Festival in London at the end of June. All profits from sales of the items went to CENIT. If anyone wants to buy any of our products please talk to Susannah.”

Jewellery making for mothers (bisutería)

“Jewellery classes are now held on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons for two hours. At the moment there are five women attending the classes, although rarely do all five attend at the same time. The jewellery that has been made recently hasn’t been selling that well, so I have been introducing them to new materials to give them a little more inspiration, imagination and motivation. I occasionally buy a jeweller magazine to help give them fresh new ideas; however, most of what they make they design themselves. I recently took the class to visit the bead shops in the Centro Historico, so they could see what was available and choose some amterials themselces. They also then had the opportunity to see some of the jewellery styles that are on sale. When the jewellery is sold, the woman who originally made it gets 80% of the price and the jewellery classes get the other 20% for new materials.”

Baking for girls and mothers (panadería)

“Cinnamon rolls, honey oatmeal bread, and chocolate chip cookies are just a few of the sweet treats that have been coming out of the panadería lately. The workshop finishes on July 6th for the school year, and we’re looking to “graduate” 5 students. They have turned into capable and talented panaderos, and even successfully made bread when the teacher wasn’t there. Thanks to all of those who have bought our products, we’ve even managed to earn enough money to pay for all our supplies, meaning that we’ve been financially independent. All and all, a great year!”