I spent the day volunteering for the children's rights festival, a festival that two of my friends (fellow volunteers) had been working on. It was an amazing day, a day I will forever remember.
The fesitval was a celebration of the 21st birthday of the National Convention of the rights of the child and saw many small NGOs, local governments and schools come together to celebrate.
There were approx. 3000 children from all walks off life and backgrounds that had registered for the event and another 100 if not more that came off the street.
Yeah I spent the day mainly pouring cups of water for children and handing out food but I did get to spend sometime interacting with some of the children including children from shelters and homeless children.
But one story that will forever stick in my head is the little boy who wanted a kite!
I had just finished my lunch and was sitting with a friend in the media tent when I was interacting with three of the street children and one little boy from a shelter. He was a lovely boy who instanly connected with me - he was being rather cheeky and kept poking me and running away! We started to play and he grabbed my hand and started pulling me away from the event - he kept running accross the oval, I followed him intrigued to see where he was going and what he wanted. We finally reached the end of the oval and he pointed towards a small cart with kites and balloons - he said in broken english: "I want a kite"
Thinking wow how am I going to say no to this one so I asked the man how much, he told me 40 pesos, 40 pesos thats 1 australian dollars, 1 australian dollar what difference was that going to make so I thought if I could make one boy smile then a kite it would be!
So together we counted out the last couple of coins I had and he took the 40 pesos to the man and bought himself a kite. His face just lit up and he run off with the kite in the air, he came running back and said "You made me happy" and then he ran off again - around and around he went whilst I held back tears.
He kept coming back throughout the day to give me a big cuddle. For the whole afternoon I kept seeing this little boy helding tightly onto his kite so he could keep a close eye on it.
I spent the afternoon wondering if I was going to end up with 3000 children from the festival also wanting a kite, thankfully word didn't get out! :-)
It was that small thing that I did for that little boy, it only cost me $1 but I know that I made a difference to that boys day!
It was a powerful day, with so many smiles on these children's faces over the simplist things. The volunteers that worked hard to get the event up and running did one amazing job!
And it will certainly be a day I will never forget!
Love Zoe
The boy with his kite!
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