Another hero

This little girl heard that other children in the community had been making superhero costumes so she made her own mask at home and came along to join the party. It brought tears to our eyes.

Superniños…Ecuador are you ready

This week the children slipped into their complete super hero outfit and while witnessing an incredible sense of empowerment, accompanied by wild excitement we managed to take a few snapshots.

   Photo by Laura Montag

   Photo by Laura Montag

 They were also thrilled to be take their creations home, and in the process filled the grey and dusty streets with colour.

The children were even interviewed by the local press aptly named ´super´.

Superñinos…Finishing touches

No superhero is complete without a cape. This week everyone chose their favourite colour and decorated an ever so shiny satin material.

Superniños...Creating a costume

This week the kids developed their superhero characters by creating masks and a symbol to wear proudly on the chests. Here´s a selection of some of the colourful creations.

Superniños

In the first of a series of workshops we asked the children to think about their own special abilities and to use these very same abilities to imagine and create a superhero. Many of the children we work with suffer from low self esteem, so we set out to encourage them to take pride in themselves and their abilities.

Some of the children with particularly low confidence needed a lot of encouragement to share or even think about what they were good at but everyone managed to create their own personal superhero with some fantastic ideas created by the end of the sessions. We were particularly struck by Madeline aka Super Lectura who loves reading and decided that her super power would be to help other children to learn to read as well. Super Carlos was very quick to declare his prowess at hide and seek so has now designed a cape that changes colour to blend in with any background. Another boy named Jesus couldn´t think what to do but when his brother pointed out how much TV he watched he decided that he would follow the news all over the world in order to know where to go to help people in need, henceforth he became known as Super TV.

Back to basics

Photo: Katie Duane
Many of the children have been struggling with mixing colours so we spent the week introducing, discussing and experimenting with basic colour theory. The children also had the opportunity to talk about how colours relate to their feelings and emotions.

The children were very proud to learn that the Ecuadorian flag is made up of the primary colours with its yellow, blue and red stripes. They were also quick to inform us that the colours are not only primary colours but the yellow signifies the sun and the gold of Ecuador, the blue signifies the sea and the red for the blood of their heroes who died in the struggle for the freedom of Ecuador. Lesson over.

We couldn´t resist playing this colour related classic. The children´s flexibility was incredible but sometimes their little limbs just were´t quite long enough.