Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Summer Camp!

August 17-21st I volunteered at my friend Martha’s Youth Summer Camp. Together with four other PVCs and four other local volunteers, we took 26 kids (between 13-17 years old) 3 hours north of Jalal Abad into the mountains. We stayed at an old soviet-built camp in a small village named Kizulunkor.

The camp was a huge success, despite the decaying condition of the camp facilities and the lack of amenities – such as running water.

Each morning we broke the group into teams and they rotated through three 1-hour sessions on topics such as: goal setting, self-esteem, nutrition and fitness, sexual health, gender roles, giving presentations, and critical thinking. Each afternoon the campers had their choice of arts and crafts, sports, games, or free time to work on preparing for the talent show. Night activities included movies, games, a talent show, and a bonfire.

On the 21st we traveled back to Jalal Abad and a married couple – Fritz and Ginger – cooked a huge delicious chili dinner for all of the camp volunteers.

It was definitely an exhausting (and dirty week – no showers!) but I’m so glad I helped out. The other volunteers and I maintained a super positive attitude all week and we had a lot of fun spending time with each other. We left with the sense that the campers all benefited from the camp too.

Above are some pictures from the camp. We took over 300 photos and videos so I’ll be happy to show more when I get home in 3 weeks!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Good Day Becky!

Sorry to bother you. My name is Ray Blakney and I am a RPCV from Mexico. I am working on a 3rd goal project with the PC regional offices and the main office in DC to try to create an online archive to keep the language training material made all over the world from getting lost. I have created a sub-section on the website my wife and I run - http://www.livelingua.com - with all the information I have been able to get to date (from over the web and sent to me directly by PC staff and PCV's). I currently have close to 100 languages with ebooks, audios and even some videos.

The next step for this project is that I am trying to get the world out about this resource so that it can not only be used by PCV's or those accepted into the Peace Corps, but also so that when people run across material that is not on the site they can send it to me and I can get it up for everybody to use. I was hoping that you could help getting the word out by putting a link on this on your site at:

http://switzerlandofthestans.blogspot.com/

so that people know it is there. There should be something there for almost everybody. It is all 100% free to use and share. Here is the specific page of the Peace Corps Archive:

http://www.livelingua.com/peace-corps-language-courses.php

Thanks for any help you can provide in making this 3rd goal project a success. And if anybody in your group has some old material they can scan or already have in digital form, and want to add to the archive, please don't hesitate to pass them my email. Thanks and have a great day.



Ray Blakney
blakney.ray@gmail.com