A training meeting was held with those in charge of the shelters where the beneficiaries of the socio-educational project of the Augustinian Recollects in Costa Rica reside during its first year of stay.
During the first year of residence in the Children’s City, its beneficiaries, who receive comprehensive academic and technical training in this socio-educational center, reside in about shelters that try to maintain a family atmosphere as best as possible.
In this way, their integration is much smoother, they feel much more welcomed and assume better coexistence with the rest of this educational community than between beneficiaries, monitors, teachers, other professionals, volunteers and religious, exceeds 600 people.
A dozen beneficiaries reside in each shelter, in their own house managed by a human trainer, in imitation of a family unit. They self-manage for elementary needs and are preparing to, from the second year onwards, live in residences for a long time and with a higher level of self-management with fewer adults acting in the immediate environment.
The human trainers of the City’s shelters have a very important role. The most young students have never been away from home or away from family; They must adapt to a completely new environment, live with strangers until that moment and perform in their learning, normally more demanding than in their environment of origin.
The shelter managers see beyond school performance: they are with these students in their moments of rest, while they make their first friends, in the moments of the first nostalgia and the hardness of adaptation, when everything is new, everything is unknown, there are too many personal insecurities.
For this reason, the shelter trainers themselves need spaces that promote their own mental and emotional well-being, allowing them to manage the stress and anxiety that can cause the dozen little lives in their charge.
These meetings are held in environments of natural beauty and we avoid commenting on topics work: it serves as oxygenation, personal and group identification, expression of emotional self-care, mutual support, they feel more relaxed and motivated.
Back in the shelters they will be able to be much more assertive in serving the beneficiaries, giving them their best performance.
