El Día de los Niños

Today I had an opportunity to get together with 3 girlfriends from church and 6 children (4 girls and 2 boys). We met a few locations to distribute some donations one of my girlfriends had acquired.

One of the locations was the People's Self-Help Housing Youth Education Enhancement Program (YEEP), http://www.pshhc.org/programs-yeep.html.

People's Self Help-Housing (PSHH), is a non-profit charitable organization in California that relies upon various donations. Their mission statement is: To provide affordable housing and programs leading to self-sufficiency for low income families, seniors, and other special needs groups on California's Central Coast.

The YEEP program offers a year round, daily after school educational program for K-12th grade students. Many of the resident parents within the community we visited today are primarily Spanish speaking with limited English skills. So the staff along with local volunteers come in to work side by side with these children and help them with their various homework assignments.


What we discovered today is that April 30th is El Día de los Niños ~ The Day of the Child. It is a holiday which is widely observed throughout Mexico and Latin America; a day set aside to value and uplift children.

We were already excited to give away the school bags filled with school supplies such as color pens, pencils, pencil sharpeners, and paper. However, after we learned what a special day today was we were amazed with God's perfect timing...we did not know the cultural significance of today, but He did. It was such a blast getting to watch the 6 kids with us distribute the school bags one by one to all the children who came to the Education Center today. There was so much joy and delight!!!

Unfortunately none of the 4 of us brought our cameras today, but I know we all were impacted and have mental digital photos (I found the previously taken picture above on the internet of the actual facility we were at today).

Here is another photo I found...it makes me wonder how many of these children were actually present today? What was so inspiring was their absolute delight ~ it did not matter that it was school supplies, they were gleefully exuding gratitude.

When we were out in the parking lot we were kind of knocking ourselves for not having more planned, but then it hit us ~ that gives us another opportunity to come back again on another day...and maybe next time one of us will remember to bring the camera :).