Volunteer in a Child Care Facility in the Philippines

I volunteered at SOS Children's Village in Tacloban City with VFV for 2 weeks. During my time there I played games with the kids, worked on math skills, and held arts and crafts time. The orphanage itself has an incredible structure, allowing the children to form families within individual homes fit with individual house mothers who become like a real Mother to them. You would never know that all 120 children at SOS are orphans or children who's parents can no longer care for them, the atmosphere is loving, caring, and inviting.

Volunteering at the Department of Social Welfare and Development run orphanage with Volunteer for the Visayans honestly changed my life. It opened my eyes to the true desperation that comes with extreme poverty. I spent many hours each day in the orphanage nursery, sometimes caring for 16 toddlers and infants at one time. From one child to the next the routine never stopped, diaper, bottle, love, rest, repeat. It was rewarding, disheartening, and amazing all at the same time. The stories of the children's lives before the orphanage, however short, shocked me at first. Some were literally left in garbage bins, others in resting public transport in the middle of the night, and other abandoned after birth at the hospital. A handful of the children were willingly given up by their parents, who realistically had no way of caring for another child. It broke my heart to hear the stories, but everytime I walked out the door I was filled with joy at the pictures which lined the entrance of children with their adoptive families abroad. The children's smiles were bursting as they went on their first sledding excursion with their parents, met their grandmother for the first time, took a family picture with their older siblings, or played with the family dog. Those pictures kept me going, and the thought that each moment I spent with each baby was enough, enough for them to know for that moment that they were loved and safe. Volunteering at an orphanage will open your eyes to the experiences of the most innocent humans on the planet, their struggles, needs, and desires. It will provide you with one of the most fulfilling experiences of your life.