I have a little problem... I've been volunteering for about 7 years in an NGO, and now I could be offered the chance to actually work there (as in get paid for the work I'm already doing)... the problem is that I'm working with teenage boys who have social problems (low income families, socially deprived, some of them have lived on the streets, some have a history of stealing ... an so on). even though sometimes they seem to know a lot of things about life, there are also many things that remain unknown teritory for them... and they give the impression that tehy don't want to know either. I'm supposed to do leisure and educational activities with them, but most of the times, they tell me that what I'm proposing is too childish for them
. I accepted this fact and asked what would they like to do instead. they didn't know what to tell me (they don't know what they want/ could do not even in their spare time). my guess is that they are not conscious about all the opportunities they have, and all the stuff they could do because no one has ever given them a choice, a chance to choose different activities. ussualy they were given a football and sent outside. so, I'm not too surprised that they couldn't answer me. but now I found myself what I could do to help them understand the diversity of activities and get them to do something else than play football and stay on the internet to play games. even when I wanted to propoose activities that I considered interesting, they cut me off before I even started. they have a lot of problems and I wish I could help them more, but at this point with some of them I have trouble talking to them, because I'm a girl and some of them have no respect for women. I believe that I could help more if I could get them to trust me and open up sometimes, but I don't know how to gain their trust not as a friend, but as a professional... Any suggestion is more than welcomed!
Thanks a million!
