Dia del Niño

Sunday (August 10) was Argentina's Children's Day, established to recognize the rights of children and promote their welfare. In Argentina, it has also been largely commercialized, where most children expect gifts from family and close friends.

On August 9, Educaser, a local non-profit that focuses on education and basic necessities of low-income children, held a Children's Fair for all the children in the greater La Plata area, in honor of Dia del Niño. I volunteered to help with the event, which was located in the very appropriate, Republica de los Niños, a park dedicated, once again, to the children of La Plata, complete with Disney-style fairy-tale buildings for different functions.

August 9's event brought hundreds of children, from different school groups around La Plata to the park. Our group had 40 kids (25 girls and 15 boys), mostly around the age of 7-8. A woman came with the group who was familiar with all the kids (a classroom aide, perhaps), as well as a mom. We met the kids, and lead them around the park between activities.

First, they played some carnival games, then had a "snack." The snack included a boxed juice, and ham and cheese sandwich, on a large baguette. Then a second one, which most of the kids ate (a few seemed to be hoarding food around this time, eating little or nothing). I could only manage one. Then, they had some sugary cereal (again, two packages each), followed by the famous Argentine treat, alfajores. Typically, triple layered cookies, filled with dulce de leche, and coated in chocolate. Again, two each. Sufficiently full of sugar, we went off to wait in line for an hour to take a 15 minute boat ride through the park's man-made lake. At this point, the staff started making complaints of the day being poorly organized (apparently, EVERYONE was going in this order, and while the carnival games and snack could accommodate several hundred children at once, the single boat with a capacity of 50 could not). To their credit, the kids did not complain, and did a decent job of waiting patiently and staying out of trouble until their turn came.

Next, was a raffle which gave out 15 bicycles to the attendants, one of the younger boys in our group was a winner! The last event of the afternoon was a theatre production of The Emperor's New Clothes, with some highly entertaining actors. Finally, we returned the kids to the parking lot, where the buses that had brought them in were waiting.