Special Needs Kids - Project Ideas?

International and local volunteers are a big help at the local Centro de Niños Especiales in Mancora. The Centre is locally-run and severely underfunded; part of your Voluntraveler fees goes directly to the Centre, but they receive little other support and serve over a hundred families. The children have a wide range of challenges: most of the families are poor, and most of the children do not go to school since there is no support for them there. The parents worry a lot about their children's futures, and about whether they will ever be independent or gainfully employed.

To raise funds for the Centre and to give the families a source of income, volunteers have been leading various projects with the kids aimed at producing something they can sell to the many international tourists who travel through Mancora. They have made snacks and foodstuffs, and they have tried different art projects. If you have skills and ideas about how a group of these kids and their families could create a low-cost, unique product, this might be a great volunteer experiences for you! They are especially interested in how they can use recylclable materials that are easy to find in town, like plastic bottles, sea shells, or sand.

Does anyone have any art project ideas, or know of any similar examples? In South Africa, I saw a project where a collective of women were using discarded tea bags to make pretty things like coasters, key chains and journals.