I have just finished my two weeks in Buenos Aires! It has been amazing, but also very intense.
This week I coached one hockey session, helped out everyday in a school, while training 3 times. I also managed to spend time this week exploring the city.
I have written my experience below for each of these acitivties
1st coaching session
The 1st session happened 30 minutes after my induction and so I was not able to plan that much. The session was within a slum about 30 minutes wlak in the suburbs of the city. The housing is all informal, meaning the residents do not have legal land right ownership. The session took place on a small concrete 5 aside football pitch, which is clearly not built for hockey (it is usually played on astro turf or grass). In total 15 people attended aged 6-12 years old, with the majority girls.
The environment felt different, but the actual session felt wieldy normal. As with most after school sports club, the children wanted to run around a lot, play games over doing drills and spend a lot of time talking to their friends. My Spanish was clearly very basic, but I was able to demonstrate effectively through demonstration.
I felt very fortunate that I have been able to play on good pitches all my life, as playing on concrete is very different. There was also a many stray dogs that kept coming onto the pitch to try and take the balls. I walked away from the session, feeling happy the children had got something out of the session and that over the next few weeks I would be able to build a good coaching relationship with them.
The children were very keen to speak to me in English and asked me a lot about England. My first drill over pretty simple passing did not go down well, and I could see they were getting bored. An issue was clearly that the kids were different levels, so in the future I think I might need to split them into different groups.
Teaching in schools
The volunteering operates in three main projects, that I will go to each week. Two of the projects are based in slum-based schools, one in the city and one in the suburbs. The final project is an after-school club, partnered with a church, that provides after school care for children. For the first two projects, as it has only been a week, it is hard to understand what role I will play. From my understanding I will be supporting a sports teacher in delivery lessons. For the first two days this involved helping to set up drills, lead some of my own drills and play with the children. The teacher is running a class of about 20 children, which is actually quite similar to the UK, which was surprisingly. What was surprising is that schools operate 3 times a day. So in the morning are children ages from 1 – 12, the afternoon 12-15 and the evening 16-18. This means that the children are only in school for 2-3 hours a day.
For the after school project, from my understanding the work will be mainly playing with the children. Currently the other volunteers and I have been playing football with the children, which they really enjoy. They are 10 years younger than mean, but are very good.
Exploring the city
I have had time in the evening to see the city. It has strong European heritage, which can you can tell for the architecture and in the language ( they speak Spanish, but has an Italian sound). So far I feel pretty safe walking around (depends on the area) and the people have been very welcoming. The biggest issue I had was getting money. ATMs are limited to $40,000 Pesos which is around £20. Due the hyperinflation they have experienced cash is hard to get your hands on. For me to get around £300 I had pay a 3rd party where I can then collect from a store, which charge a fee of £15.