Conviven back in business

After a silent month Conviven is back on track. We have once again started the classes inside Ciudad Oculta and have picked up some new private English students at Conviven.

Next week we’ll go to a day camp to distribute flayers about our summer activities and after that we’ll hopefully have more kids to play with (at the moment we are just dealing with classes in Ciudad Oculta and private English students at Conviven).

Also as some of you might know, my time at Conviven is almost up. A year has passed by very quickly. There is a new person, Bella from the UK to take over my things and hopefully also this weblog!

PH15 exhibition in Las Vegas

The Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery, University of Nevada Las Vegas is pleased to host, "ph15: Young Photographers from Argentina," an exhibition of photographs by 29 young photographers and their teachers. It opens January 14, 2008 and runs through February 15, 2008 with a reception Friday, January 25 from 7 to 9 in the gallery.

University of Nevada, 4505 Maryland Parkway
Las Vegas, NV 89154-5002 United States

Phone 1 (702) 895-3893

Mo-Fri from 9AM to 5PM & Sat from 10AM to 2 PM
http://donnabeamgallery.unlv.edu

The ph15 workshop takes place at Conviven every week. In the beginning of their relationship with the sponsoring foundation, students are given cameras, which they are allowed to keep for life if they complete the first two-years of the program. The aim of the project is to teach kids the creative power of photography by giving them a form of expression that reflects their own values and culture.

You can read morea bout ph15 from their website.

What did we do in 2007?

Here is a list of things we did during the second half of 2007. Unfortunately there are no records about what happened at Conviven before that, so if you remember any events that you helped to organise before June 2007, send the information to kangsepp at gmail dot com. thank you!

Teach English Programme
Took place: every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, 15.30-17.30 from February to December
Description: Teaching English to children in different age groups. The programme run relatively well and due to a bigger amount of volunteers we were able to provide a more individual approach. Kids knew their class time schedule and behaved (more or less). By December we had about 20-30 regular students and about 10-15 people who showed up every now and then. The kids were divided into groups according to their level.
Further plans: Finding a project manager for the programme who could be involved in creating a better curriculum, getting contact information of the students (so that we could prevent kids from falling out), getting more kids to show up.

Reorganising Teach English Programme
Took place: August 2007
Description: Since students in each class were on a very different level, we made a test to divide them up in order to improve the teaching process.
Everybody took the 3 pages long test and after that A, B and C groups were formed, A being the lowest and C being the highest level. Today the test is used on new students.
Further plans: having a test every month or every two months in order to see the progress.

Creating a curriculum and a system of classroom records
Took place: Oct-Nov 2007
Description: Every level was provided with their own binder that has appropriate worksheets in them. We went through some books to find worksheets and made some our own sheets, also photocopied everything. A system to maintain the folders was created.
Also every group has sort of a guideline for curriculum, attendance and progress sheets. Teachers are actively using the binders and they provide great help. Attendance and progress sheets are not filled as regularly as should.
Further plans: Finding a person who could only deal with the curriculum and binders (finding new worksheets, making sure the teachers fill in all the information about classes etc).

Creating a weblog
Took place: July-August 2007
Description: putting together information about Conviven and how to volunteer with us in order to find new volunteers and also keep in touch with the old ones. Publishing information, news and stories about Conviven on http://www.centroconviven.blogspot.com/. We have managed to get other volunteers involved in creating content and we have a some regular readers. Already people interested in volunteering have found Conviven through the weblog.
Further plans: Getting more content and news to the site, finding more links. Getting the page to appear in search engines so that potential volunteers could find us more easily. Ideally finding an editor who could deal with updating weblog on a daily basis.

Creating a volunteer coordinator position
Took place: June 2007
Description: In order to build a better organisational system, a long term volunteer was taken out of being a teacher. Liis started dealing with everything else, such as being in touch with new potential volunteers, coordinating volunteers at Conviven, keeping things under control, starting new projects, even being a secretary for Valmir. Creating that position has improved things at Conviven. Because of that we have more volunteers and it is easier to get along at Conviven for the short term volunteers.
At the moment Liis is about to leave her position and Bella is about to take over.

Creating a welcome kit for the new volunteers
Took place: June 2007
Description: Some documents were put together to make it easier for the new volunteers to understand Conviven and the kids that come there. Originally the kit contained a sheet with contact information, short description of people working at Conviven, short introduction of Conviven as an organisation, some rules and overview of Teach English programme. Today volunteers say the welcome kit helped them a lot, but also some new content should be added. Also the list of rules has grew longer with time.

Creating a volunteer database
Took place: June 2007
Description: We created a folder with the contact information of volunteers. All the new volunteers need to fill in a contact information sheet, all the data will be inserted to an excel table after that and the sheets are kept at Conviven. Before there were no records of how many volunteers have been working at Conviven, where were they from or how to get in touch with them after they’ve left.
Today the database has already helped us with fundraising and keeping in touch with people who used to work at Conviven.

Fundraisers
We had different fundraisers on the second half of the year, making some money for Conviven. Some of the money was used to send Nahuel to compete in Turkey, some of it is still waiting to be invested in central heating or something else useful for Conviven.

Clean up day
Took place: 8th of November 2007
Description: We organised the space above the classrooms, reorganised the big hall a little, washed windows, walls and floors and threw out a lot of rubbish. We managed to get another cupboard for our stuff. Hopefully we have the time and manpower to reorganise kitchen in January and also get some painting done at the same time.

Mi pequeño hogar del dia
Started: 22nd of October 2007
Description: We started giving art, theatre, dance and English classes inside Ciudad Oculta. The classes became popular immediately.

Field trip to the park
Took place: 3rd of November
Description: kids were taken to the park to play and get away from their natural environment. The kids and volunteers had lots of fun.

Helping Nahuel to Turkey
Took place: oct-nov 2007
Description: We fundraised money to send 10 year old Nahuel Rojas to compete World Youth Chess Championships. Now Nahuel is back from Turkey where he had the time of his life.

Starting a library for the volunteers
Took place: Nov 2007
Description: quite many of our volunteers tend to read a lot, but don’t have books with them here in Buenos Aires, so we created a library to help. At the moment we already have more than 20 books, hopefully the amount will grow enough soon to establish a database.

Helping kids with homework and Math
Took place: on and off throughout 2007
Description: some of our volunteers have been helping the kids with their homework and math studies. In the future we would like to get more volunteers on projects like that so we could actually establish a similar programme to Teach English. There is a need for that in the neighbourhood.

Organising the library
Took place: Oct-Dec 2007
Description: creating some sort of order in the books we have on the shelves. After several people tried to organise it, the library still looks very messy, but probably less than half a year ago.

Conviven´s annual festival of end of the year
Took place: Dec 2007
Description: volunteers helped Valmir to organise a festival with different activities to end the year at Conviven. We had the whole day full of music, painting, singing, playing different games etc.

Final English Class

To celebrate our last English class this year we organised a little party for the kids with diplomas, cherries and juice.

Here are some pictures from last Thursday when we played our last games until March and said good bye to class room rutin.

The English classes have also stopped inside Ciudad Oculta and from 7^th of January we’ll be having a new schedule for summer. Probably there will be activities on three days a week, both in Conviven and Maria Rosa’s house. The schedule has not been finalised yet, but you will have the opportunity to read it ASAP.

Conviven Annual Festival

Back from Narnia Fairytale

„Have you seen the film The Chronicles of Narnia,” Nahuel’s dad Ivan asks me when I pop the question how did everything go in Turkey, “coming home was like entering another world again,” he adds emotionally.

Although Nahuel’s life in Ciudad Oculta is not as glamorous as it was in Turkey – after all they live in one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires – our 10 year old chess champion is happy. His big brown eyes grow even bigger and start glowing as he speaks how he saw the sea for the first time of his life and even went swimming in it, despite the fact it is already pretty cold in Europe.

According to Ivan Nahuel did not do so great on the championships, collecting just 4 points out of 11, but he also thinks the kid didn’t have the chance to prepare himself properly for the challenge. Especially since them going to Turkey was not sure up to the last minute. “There were a lot of mixed emotions involved,” says Ivan, “Nahuel being on an airplane for the first time in his life, seeing huge snowy mountains and swimming in the sea.”

“But the experience itself was very important,” Ivan adds. “He made some new friends and understood how important it is to learn new languages.”

Nahuel agrees that the trip was worth all the trouble with the money, visas, getting the plane tickets and finally almost missing the opportunity to play. “I liked everything,” Nahuel shrugs his shoulders without knowing what to point out – the Blue Mosque, Taksim square or Grand Bazar in Istanbul or sea and competing with others in Antalya.

“I spoke a little English, made new friends,” is Nahuel kind of shy with words, but agrees that he should try to start sending e-mails in English to all his new friends he made. After all – how often does a 10 year old have the chance to play chess together with 1600 other chess geniuses all around the world?

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If you liked to help us to pay back the debts we’ve made in order to get Nahuel to The World Youth Chess Championships, please do contact Benjamin (boenne at hotmail dot com). We still have 350 USD to pay back and we would like to get that debt off our shoulders as soon as possible.

Read more about Nahuel and how we managed to get him to Turkey.

P.S. the pictures will be uploaded ASAP as Ivan promised to bring us a CD with the photos they made in Turkey.

Theatre workshop progressing

This last Friday marked the 4th theatre workshop meeting between the Conviven volunteers and the kids from Ciudad Oculta, reports our volunteer Nicole.

The kids, ranging in age from about 3 to 15 greeted us with the standard swing-me-around-until-you-remember-you’re-at-least-twice-my-age and huge gapped smiles. For about the first 10 minutes of the workshop, we shared the space with 5 teenage boys practicing some kind of musical routine on an electronic drum set (the space is actually the converted living room of a neighbourhood woman named Maria Rosa and her husband who in addition to allowing our theatre workshop works with Conviven volunteers to organise art, dance, and English workshops.)

Thankfully, after 10-minutes of uninterrupted musical and acrobatic distraction, the kids were ready to participant in our first group activity. We began with a game of pistolera where the children circle around one person and, once chosen, must quickly sit allowing the two people next to them to dual. The last person to react sits out until the next game.

The game gets progressively harder as fewer and fewer kids are left in the circle and it's less clear who is supposed to be duelling. We chose this particular game to begin to get the kids focused on reacting to each others' sound and movement. As we are interacting more regularly with the kids, we've begun to get a better understanding of what they enjoy and a sense of the creative capacities of many of the children.

We’ve begun to brainstorm ways to build on some of the games that have become staples in the hour-long workshop. For example, one of our volunteers Maria introduced us to a game similar to charades where two teams begin on separate sides of a room.

The teams alternate agreeing on some kind of object or person to act out and then approach the other team whose job it is to continue guessing until they've guessed correctly. The acting team must turn around and try to get back to their side of the room before the guessing team tags them forcing them to switch sides.

The highlight of this week's game was when one team decided to act out "cheese." As the workshop develops, children are becoming increasingly creative with the objects of people they choose to act out and the ways they choose to represent the object or person without using words or props.

The kids saw us off with the standard combination of "chau's" and kisses. Several circled back into line to say bye again, this time giving us exaggerated, high-society "chau's" and air kisses.