July 25 – Summer Kids Club – First Day

 In the last few weeks we’ve been busy preparing for a summer kids club. Curriculum, staff, material and registration have been occupying us – but we are happy to say that the hard work is starting to pay off. The first day ended with a lot of happiness.

Theater class

78 kids attend the summer camp ages 6-14. In their groups they sing dance play and also learn through experiencing new activities like painting their own portrait, making recycled sculptures, making a  theater show and being ‘journalists’ as they compose their own village newspaper. Each group is led by young people from the village who are responsible for the group activities.

The kids are happy and cooperative and we have been having a good time organizing this activity. 

Learning about the environment

Working with recycled bottles

Art Class

July 24 – Planting Trees

We often get visitors at the school. Everybody comments on how beautiful and well kept it is and then after a few minutes they ask: “but it’s so hot! Why don’t you plant some trees?”

We end up explaining that trees depend on water and irrigation and that it requires a little more planning than it looks. The trees that were planted at the beginning of the year are doing great, and are a constant reminder that a job was not done.

In the last 3 weeks we bought some trees, and also received 2 very nice donations for additional trees. Our water system is working regularly, and we have some irrigation equipment. We planted all around the school fence and are planning to continue planting around the school yard. It’s a process, but – it has finally began!

Planting Trees

School vegetable garden has drip irrigation system

July 21 – Waveplace Computer Program

We’ve been looking into various computer programs for a few months. We wanted a program that had a curriculum we can follow and not one that just provides computers. The Waveplace program was a good fit – it gives children access to computers, uses computers in a non-orthodox way (basically focusing on programming and not computer literacy) and encourages imagination and problem solving. In the past 6 weeks we interviewed mentors for this program. We found some energetic, smart, young people in the village to become the program mentors . Our mentors went through the waveplace training session, and after that spent an extra 2 weeks with us preparing lessons, discussing methodologies and coming up with a plan.

Mentor Training

Our Mentors preparing for class

We launched the program a week ago and its going great. The kids show up excited, the mentors are well prepared and the learning is done in a fun way leaving everyone thirsty for more.

At the end of next week we’re starting self-work with each student writing, drawing and animating his own story, we cant wait to see what the kids come up with!

Each kid has his own laptop for the duration of the course

One mentor leads the class

The mentors help our when needed

Most of the time - the kids work on their own

July 7 - End of school year

Today was the last day of exams for the first school year of Ecole Nouvelle Zoranje. It’s a good time to summarize – but we have no time. Our summer activities are starting next week. There are no real structured activities for the village kids during the summer, so our school is becoming a center of activity during this period. Stay tuned for our summer reports….

School is Over!

June 20 – Theatre and Farewell

Pauline and Lena are two volunteers that have been accompanying the school since the beginning of the school year. Throughout the school year they worked in the classrooms to enhance French speaking capabilities, assisting the teachers and preparing many of the special activities and celebrations.

Before returning to France, they prepared and rehearsed a theatre piece with the children. Today the entire school gathered to watch “Les vieux doudoux” by Paul Madec presented by the school theatre group.

We then sadly said our goodbye to Lena and Pauline. We want to say thank you and wish them best of luck in their future. We hope to see them again!

Pauline

Lena

June 18-19 – Kindergarten Teacher Training

One of our main focus points is ongoing teacher training to enhance teacher capabilities and knowledge. This weekend Zoranje’s kindergarten teachers joined the rest of the Prodev kindergarten staff in a 2 day training and workshop which covered working with the children and creating and using teaching aids suitable for small kids.

June 13 – Kitchen and Drinking water

We have a kitchen inside the school! Since the beginning of the school year we have been addressing the challenges of cooking in a small warehouse away from the school and transporting water and food to and from the warehouse. Today was the first day of preparing the daily lunch in our new school kitchen which we cleaned up and painted last week. The kitchen building and joining water tower were donated by JDC and Latet.

The new kitchen building

Even more important – we finally have drinking water in the school! This is a rare occurrence in Haiti in which clean drinking water is still not available to a large part of the population. We have a new water filtration system which should provide the kitchen and all the children of the school with thirst quenching and clean drinking water. This is a good opportunity to thank Yele Haiti for providing us with drinking water until we were able to reach our water independence. 

Installing the water filtration system