Bridging the gap is a mentoring and volunteering initiative that took place last summer between Spain and Equatorial Guinea. It started with the desire to accompany secondary school students from vulnerable groups with support in their subjects, and at the same time to offer meaningful experiences of online or face-to-face volunteering to young people who wanted to give some of their free time for the benefit of others.
Bridges between volunteers, from various parts of Spain and different ages, and the students of the Virgen María de África School in Malabo (Equatorial Guinea).
Bridges between former students of the Teresian Association (some from Malabo, others from the Alumni Network) and current students.
Bridges between monitors and children from Guadix.
Bridges between the teams of NGO InteRed, and Educación y Cultura Association, and the Colegio Virgen María de África, who have accompanied the experiences, sometimes at a distance and sometimes in situ. In Malabo, in an extraordinary way due to the pandemic, in the middle of the school year. In Guadix, during the summer activities for children in the “Cuevas” neighbourhood.
Twenty-six people participated in the online volunteering and twenty in the face-to-face volunteering, both in Malabo and Guadix. For the online mentoring there were different telematic resources. Every day, students and volunteers communicated with each other to make academic support and human exchange possible, in a give-and-take situation.
This valuable experience is part of a programme of the Socio-educational Project Creciendo in collaboration with all the above-mentioned entities. According to the testimonies of those who have participated in it, it is a door that opens for encounter, beyond borders and distances, through bridges of hope and networks of collaboration.
Read more about on the website of the TA in Spain.
TA Info.
Published in News