doing some drifting
Some World Vision coworkers and I have been working on a Youth Leader Small Grants project, teaching Armenian village students about project design and management and, through a series of steps, awarding some of these village kids with small grants to do projects in their communities. In one small village, Yaghdan, the students applied for furniture and supplies for their new youth center. The first thing they wanted to do with these new supplies was a small weekend camp. So, after World Vision supplied the furniture, myself and another Peace Corps volunteer went to the village with a couple days of summer camp planned.The camp was inspired by a project called Little Drifters (check it out at the killer creative blog, BOOOOOOOM). The two of us PCV's expanded the idea to a two day workshop exploring creativity and nature. The kids made journals, wrote nature poems, and discussed how creating art that explores nature helps protect nature by helping others come to value it. We made posters out of their poems to hang on their youth center walls, and just before sunset we hiked up to a hill peak above their village. Most of them, including the Youth Center Director, had never hiked up the hill; they watched the sun go down with the excited chatter of kids discovering.The next day we discussed litter, wrote more poems and then talked about creating found art using examples of garbage art and the boats pictured at BOOOOOOOM. Then the kids went out to collect garbage from their village fields and likewise picked up natural refuse to create their own Little Drifters. We waded out into Yaghdani Get to let the boats go, splashing at the boats and each other and ignoring the blazing sun.Enjoy the pics below from our Little Drifter creation:
My Armenian friend teaching about volunteering to protect the environment.
Yaghdan's very supportive mayor, one of the few woman mayor's I've met
Below: Collecting, building, and sending off our Little Drifters.
