The faculty of the School of Special Education of the City of San Juan de Dios de Alcalá de Guadaíra accompanies, on a voluntary basis and up to twice a week, students with disabilities who, due to the emergency situation, have not attended the classrooms more than three months.
The City of San Juan de Dios in Alcalá de Guadaíra is a comprehensive care center for people with disabilities of all ages thanks to the different devices it has. Upon confinement, users of devices such as school or the day unit saw their daily routines suspended. For them it is a very sudden break from everyday life that they do not understand and that can lead to apathy, sadness or more complex behaviors that are difficult to manage at home.
This is why the teachers of the San Juan de Dios City decided to go one step further and volunteer, picking up these boys from their home for up to two days each week to take a walk, accompany them, ride a bike or play with them. Jesús Rodríguez, one of the teachers who exercises this volunteering, explains that from the first moment of alertness, the teachers planned the course through activities that the students could carry out at home, through videoconferences or phone calls. “Through a survey we conducted with families, the center detected different needs, among them the one that in the face of confinement, managing anxiety was difficult in some situations, and they needed to alleviate it in some way,” explains the teacher. Hence the idea of this very special volunteering.
Around twenty teachers have been serving more than twenty families for more than two months. Jesús goes with another teacher, María de los Ángeles, to offer company and a trip to two brothers with intellectual disabilities: Joel, 13, and Héctor, 5. Jesús explains that, although they cannot verbalize what they feel, their faces reflect the joy with which they receive them. For grandmother and caregiver, Gracia, these walks “are a wonderful thing for children, and it allows me to go shopping, to the doctor or to do some quick management that I can’t do otherwise.”
The teacher from the City of San Juan de Dios in Alcalá de Guadaíra assures that the families receive this volunteer service with much gratitude and emotion , “because they know that, despite this difficult situation that we all live in, we do not forget them. Those families and their children are the other heroes of this pandemic,” he concludes.
