Tenderness is the first feeling that invades anyone arriving to this place. Dedicated to babies, from six months to four years old, Kindergarten is a colorful and joyful place where the kids running and playing non-stop. You will always see a monitor going after one of the children, because they are small whirlwinds.
PSE gives them the room they need to grow up and play without limits. They are the owners of the playground and invade the area without hesitation throughout the day. This place makes them feel like what they really are, children. “I think this camp has a really big impact on their lives, because many children don’t even have enough to eat. It is important for them to realize that we care about them and that they can be happy because they feel the love of others,” says Deborah, a European instructor.
This program has been launched when PSE realizes that the mothers who are employed by the NGO needed someone to look after their children during their working hours, or even to have some free time for them. Although most of the children come for this reason, there are also mothers from PSE’s neighborhood who do not work for the organisation and who leave their children in Kindergarten to take care of them and interact with other children.
PSE gives them the room they need to grow up and play without limits.
The daily organization in this project is a bit different from the others, since the children are too young to impose schedules or rules that could be too hard for them to respect. So, children arrive by the hand of their parents from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m., and the action begins.
All day long, the monitors have to make sure the kids go to the bathroom, eat, drink, take showers… In the other projects, children have more freedom because they already know their body and how to deal with it. In this program, the volunteers are constantly reminding and helping them out with these basic points. “We need to put an extra physical effort into working with the children of this project, because we have to feed them, to shower them, to clean them, to play with them and basically to always be with them until they go to rest,” says Thearith Em, a Khmer monitor.
“We are in charge of helping to create a comfort zone that will make those sweet little seeds grow.”
They are splitted among different groups of colors, and two monitors, one European and one Khmer are in charge of each one. That makes the organization easier for the volunteers. In the morning, they do activities all together. “It is true that it is not possible to do very directed games or with many rules, however, we can do many sensory games with them and allow them to be a child… It is an age during which children are like seeds ; they need to be cared for, they need to be given affection and they need to be helped during their growth. How they are help to grow up, how they are educated, are decisive to how they will end up, in one way or another. That’s why it is super important to be with them from they very youngest ages, to respect them, to take care of them, to give them affection… In the camp, we try to teach them to live in society, to tidy up, to clean up, to become autonomous when it comes to doing the most basic things, to share, to respect others… and to offer them some basic goods that some children can probably not find at homes. Even if they are small, it is super important to guide them. As monitors, we are in charge of helping during this short time, to create a comfort zone that will make these sweet and small seeds grow”, Clara, the European coordinator of the program.
They also organize simple sensory activities. Yet, most of the time is dedicated to games in the park or waterparties. Children love to move from one kind of activity to another, so they don’t feel stuck into a tight program.
In the afternoon, they do other types of workshops, such as reading. For these, Khmer monitors are those who take the workshops over so that the children can understand the stories they are told. “We try to organize activities but we let the children guide them in the end, because if we try to do it ourselves… It doesn’t usually work very well,” says Teresa, a European instructor.
During this period of their lives, children need a lot of sleep, explaining that the nap lasts at least two hours. After this, activities resume and every Thursday the games are organized with the children from the Pensionnaires Program. It is a good way to connect with other children of different ages, and it allows both groups to change their daily lives. In recent days, the instructors have also tried to set up activities with the Specials group. After all, they already share the space in which their activities are organized and sometimes, we can see the children of the Specials program running away to play with the babies.
Children are like seeds waiting to grow.
This camp is very important because, as Clara says, children are like seeds waiting to grow. The way children are cared for and educated in their early years is the basis for what their lives will be like in the future. The role of PES and the monitors at this camp is essential for the rest of the NGO. You start by protecting them when they only are a few months old, and they end up leaving here with a job.
