Hey everyone!
After latvian cultural evening started very important and meaningful day. Before project realizations groups met again together and tried to prepare for later actions, e.g. collecting all needed materials or re-talking plan for a day. Places we visited - kindergarten, school, orphanage house, refugee centre. Let's see how did it go from all group reports:
We visited kindergarten. At first we had discussion with
teachers about their kindergarten system and they were really opened-minded
about our visit and we noticed some differences between the kindergarten system
in each countries.
Even the children didn’t understand english, they were very
attached to us and participated in our activities and were satisfied with them.
And we are really happy that our plan worked and children were happy about our
visit!
On 19th April we visited
social institutions in Odessa. One group also visited the orphanage house. A
large group was divided into 2 smaller groups – one focused on children between
ages 6-10 and the other group paid more attention to youngsters between the
ages of 10-16. The second group of 5 people spent their 2 hours with the older
children. Lots of fun and developing games were played, cultural diversities
and interesting facts discussed and smaller individual conversations were also
held.
The children were very happy and satisfied to spend their day a little
bit differently than usually. The big interest into our activity and the sincere
smiles on children’s faces made the ENTER participants genuinely happy – they
had made a small change.
After travelling
by a tram for 10 minutes, we finally reached the school. We had only 45 minutes to act, so we tried to
make activities in the frames of limited time.
At first, we had
a small introduction of the project. Then by M&M activity we melted ice
between us and class. We introduced ourselves and obtained information from
them. We divided them into the 3 groups and started discussion. We helped them to collect information about
the theme. The topic of the first discussion was an active citizenship.
Each group discussed it for 5 minutes and
chose a person who presented it to the rest of class. Then there was the second
discussion about the activities that were already done by them. Students told
us about a fair, which was held in their school and which was a truly good
example of an active citizenship. There also were girls, who helped homeless
dogs. Some of them helped old people as well. After this, each of us shared our
experience with them and tried to convince them, why it
is important.
In the end of
the meeting students had an opportunity to evaluate our work and to write down
the web pages of important projects in different countries.
“ENTER” participants was in the Odessa
Refugee Center. The meeting started at 3p.m. and the guide Luba, who works
there, showed us the whole center of the refugees, told us the stories of
people and about their daily life. Some families are living there for few
years, because the government still did not give them the documents which can
allow them to work legally, so this center is their real home and everything
what they have.
When the introduction was finished, we had
a chance to meet refugees’ kids and to know them better. We were slightly surprised
that they were gently accept us and were glad to participate in our activities in
which they were all with us during all
our visit. We can say that children there are full of energy, have great
enthusiasm, so they even proposed their own game!
Some of us were shocked that this kind of
problem with refugees exists nowadays, because in their own countries they don`t
attach with it. When you meet people you always think about their past and
their future and these kids came from somewhere where they will never be back. They
do not have their own home, they need to live all together and they have no
chance to have a normal job. But the idea is that their decisions are only up
to them! What they are going to do – is in their hand and it doesn’t mean that
the game is over, that is why such kids need even more attention! We were
learning from them: NEVER BREAK DOWN!
This was was full of suprises for us, but what is more - for kids. Isn't that great feeling to see children smiles? Because "Sharing is caring.. Be the one who shares, Be the one who cares!"
At the same time they made a quiz for all countries. Lots of tricky questions and what was the interesting part - they made questions specially for each country and for the right answer got Moldova's flag bracelete.
The evening continued with games and dances. They even showed some performances from their national dances. After that we tried to repeat and it wasn't that hard. :)
by Signe
