Education Making Great Strides With Help From State University
October 18, 2016One of our regional directors and a group of volunteers recently took a trip to one of the orphanages in Eastern Europe. As well as playing games and activities with the kids, they took 1st year students to a State University to get teaching and advice from a professor.
"We brought 1st year students to the University to learn from a professor who is also an online tutor. The trip was very effective. We had two big rooms available for our activities. In one room the professor held a two hour seminar on history and social science. The second room was for training of communication skills and emotional intellect. The professor spoke to the guys about law, elections, constitution, and division of powers. All these topics are usually covered in State Exams and are especially challenging for kids.The professor will continue tutoring online, but he wanted to get to know the boys in person and establish emotional contact. With the other kids, we had a lot of diverse activities: making up a fairy tale in groups, using pictures from children’s magazines, learning to recognize and express emotions using mimics and gestures, and engaging in a role play. This was truly exciting for all the kids and volunteers. Every activity ended up with the kids interviewing about what they have learned and what they felt."
Volunteer Story: Fotima a new volunteer, is a first year student studying social work from the State University. She came to the orphanage for the first time and she said she was afraid that she would be upset by what she would see there. However, when we were coming back she admitted that she was so happy to visit the kids and to get involved in the training and communication that she forgot all her fears. She said we gave her a chance to understand that she had made the right choice when she decided to go to social work school. She wants to help the kids and she wants to learn more how she could that. That is why she will be joining us next time.
Child Story: Little Kolya became everyone’s pet! He is 8 years old. His mom is in prison for selling drugs. He is very intelligent and very social. He wanted to participate in all activities and gave very clever answers to many questions in the training. Everyone loved hanging out with him and we look forward to helping him develop.
