Hogar Sagrado Corazón

Maria to help out when they wake up. Duties may include: helping them dressed, changed, bathed, combed and brushing their teeth. This SLM also helps with homework with the kindergarten and prekinder kids. Lunch is at 11:30 followed by baths. This volunteer is then responsible for walking the girls to and from the kinder that’s down the street Santa Ana: Like with Santa María, this job essentially involves accompanying the girls (6-10 year-olds) through their daily activities. This volunteer eats with Santa Ana, helps them get ready for school, drops them off and/or picks them up from school, helps them with homework, accompanies them to music classes in the hogar, and is in charge of the jugueteria where their games and activities are kept. Basically, this volunteer just lets the girls of Santa Ana know that they are loved.

Nurse duty: This volunteer is responsible for taking care of all cuts and bruises, coughs and colds. If the girls need to see a doctor or dentist, it is the volunteer’s responsibility to bring them to the clinic. This volunteer is also then responsible for following the doctor’s instructions and administering medications and whatever lotions or creams are prescribed. The clinic is open from 8am-noon and then from 2pm-6pm. In the case of an emergency or if a doctor referral is issued for admission to a hospital, the child is accompanied to the local hospital. For cases like appendicitis (which is incredibly common here) that require the girl to stay overnight in the hospital, you are in charge of sleeping there overnight with them. This task involves the most responsibility; it is important for this volunteer to be flexible with his/her schedule (even on your day off) as a medical emergency can’t always be foreseen.

Tutor/Secretary: This job essentially covers all school-related things. You have the keys to the homework room, so you’re in charge of getting all the girls’ backpacks out in the morning before school and making sure everything’s locked up at night. You do two homework sessions, one in the morning from 8:00-10:00 and one in the afternoon form 2:00-5:00. When you’re not in the homework room, you’re in the office, answering the phone or helping with whatever random thing is going on (organizing donations, helping the social worker with paper work). Some of the nuns are not very good with computers so any time they want something made on Microsoft Word or want to look something up, you’ll help them with that. There’s also normally at least one girl who doesn’t finish her homework during the normal homework hours or needs internet, so you can help them while you’re in the office. The other part of this job is just being available for whatever random errands the madres need: going to parent-teacher conferences, buying school supplies, going to the school when there are dance performances, etc. Basically the nature of this job is just to be ready to help out with anything anybody needs at any moment. It’s always different, sometimes you don’t have a free moment between waking up and going to sleep, and other times there’s literally nothing to do, so if you like change you’ll be good at this job.

While SLMs get to know everyone in the hogar, each SLM is typically given a group of girls be be responsible for. SLMs will live the majority of your days with this group: being the proud parent at dance performances, eating meals with them, helping them with homework and chores, etc. SLMs will accompany this group of kids more so than the rest on field trips, errands, and school functions.