Throughout the year, A Little Gesture has welcomed a new staff member: please meet our Psychologist, Ácio! Ácio is a young Mozambican who, after a month of volunteer work in our SLM – Santa Luísa de Marillac School, joined the SLM HIV Day Centre in September for a period of 3 months.
Ácio continued his exceptional work with the children at the HIV Day Centre, a centre that secures medical care, meals and follow up to school attendance & academics for HIV infected children. Ácio organised not only group sessions with the 34 children at the Day Centre, but also individual sessions aimed at the 4 children who displayed a clinical framework than was frailer than average.
A Little Gesture has been witnessing the professional evolution of our Local Technicians and the positive outcome of team work. Mano Orcídio, our Local Technician for almost 4 years at SLM, and an ALG University scholarship holder, welcomed Ácio. For Orcídio, who accumulates several roles in what is ALG’s biggest single intervention programme: the SLM school offers Sponsoring, School Feeding, HIV Centre, After Class Study Support, and the ocasional build of family huts or other small infrastructure, amog many others.
Ácio’s extra help was a wonderful surprise!
Here’s what Orcídio said about his mate Ácio: “To be honest on his first day in Manjangue I doubted his skills. Thankfully, he was much better than I anticipated, he’s willing to work, he has lots of creativity and self-esteem. Working with children from a different community is not easy, but he’s able to deal with everyone and, in fact, children love Mano Ácio. It is very rare to find a young man with this type of behaviour. He puts into practice what he learned at school, revealing that what really matters to him is knowledge and not only having a diploma. Mano Orcídio Edú”
Help us to keep telling more stories like this in 2019, with a Little Gesture (here)