Dear friends,
This story introduces our football team. StepUp football team was organized 2 years ago. It mostly consists of our current students, but it is open to our graduates and those orphanage graduates who do not participate in our education programmes. For the latter group it can be viewed as a stepping point to mainstream education or training.
We organized football team because we believe that sport is a powerful tool of changing lives and simply because majority of our students are males and they like fooball.
Recently StepUp football team got a new coach - Andrey. Under his command Step Up participated in the third Blitz Football League and came the third in this tournament.
The players and coach shared their impressions about this tournament.
Sergey, player: "This tournament was a transitional moment, a starting point. It was the first tournament with our new coach. Many things, such as communication, understanding what the coach is expecting from us, we began from scratch. And you need some time for such things to bear fruit. With our new coach we have a new arrangement in our team that pleases us, and will lead to better results in the future. We hope that during the new tournament we will do better, refine our game and win. We have a real chance. You always have a chance to win, even if your competitor is stronger."
Andrey, coach: "I didn’t see how the team played before, but, in general, I’m surprised by their performance, their understanding of the game and their efforts. I am grateful to some players who can sacrifice results to the greater good of building a true team, to making the team grow and develop, and to making others play better. This was one of the most important things that happened during this tournament — it is not only victories that are important, but also the growth and development of our players."
Ruslan, player: "We have a very close-knit team, and great guys who can play better than they do at the moment. It’s cool when there are such guys. By and large, our team is young, and promising. In the future we are planning to take part in the Russian Cup... We are buying new football uniform. Everything will be great!"
I attached our March newsletter for your kind attention. There are more news, photos and longer stories inside.
A big thank you to all our supporters!!
Sincerely,
Anna
Dear friends,
At last our long summer has ended and Step Up has begun its ordinary - interesting and busy - life. Over the long years of the Centre's work it has become a pleasant tradition to celebrate the opening of the academic year, to meet our graduates, teachers, guests and friends and mark the day in a friendly atmosphere.
This year's opening ceremony took place on September, 17. As always we congratulated our graduates on the new step in their life they are about to embark on - they were all admitted to colleges, and one of them was admitted to university. Many young people continue studying at Step Up even after their graduation, taking individual classes. Our teachers are always eager to help.
About a year ago we started a fundraising campaign at the GlobalGiving network! Over this year we received about $10,000 of your donations! Thank you to each and every one of you for making this to happen.
Your donations comprised about 25% of all personal donations collected by Step Up during the year.
Today we are starting a new initiative! This campaign is very specific. We ESPECIALLY WELCOME RECURRING DONATIONS starting from $10.
$10 will provide 1 hour of classes for 5 students.
$160 covers all tuition costs for 1 student for 1 month.
A generous anonymous donor has agreed to match 100% of new monthly donations from December 1, 2012 through December 31, 2012. New recurring donations created on GlobalGiving.org will be matched 1-to-1 up to $100 per donor per project.
You can make you donations by choosing "Monthly Recurring" option at our progect page: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/giving-russian-orphans-an-equal-start-in-life/
Full terms and conditions of this campaign can be found at: http://www.globalgiving.org/leaderboards/recurring-challenge-2012/
I attached an annual report for the 2011-2012 schooling year and our September newsletter for your kind attention.
Thank you very much for all your support.
Sincerely,
Anna
Dear Step Up friends!
Since our last report, we've been extraordinarily busy starting classes in the new school year! Our students continue to amaze us with their creativity, resilience, and motivation to achieve positive goals. As always, we could not do what we do without your support (on-line and locally).
Here are just a few of the results of the previous school year:
Your support not only helps us to provide opportunities for orphanage graduates, it sends a powerful message of your belief in their abilities to choose positive new life paths. We are so grateful!
I attached a Step Up Newsletter for June 2012. There are more news and longer stories inside.
Sincerely, Anna
Dear friends,
This not an "ask" letter. You're getting this email because you've generously supported Step-Up in the past and we'd like to take a moment, as we prepare to yearly and graduation exams, to thank you for your help and tell you a little about what went on at Step-Up this past spring.
Thanks to you support, in September 2011-April, 2012 we had 6,725 classes taught, including 1,260 classes taught by volunteers.
This year three students graduate from the 11th grade and are going to take notorious Unified State Exams in Russian and Maths. One of those three will be also struggling with Physics. They work hard at this final stage. We are proud of them and they are a great source of inspiration to other Step Up students.
Seven students are already taking state exams for the 9th grade and soon will get full value diplomas for low secondary school. It is both an extraordinary experience and big achievement for them. They have been studying 3-5 years, often combing work at day time and studies in the evening, to come to this point. We all cross fingers and wish good luck to this year graduates!
You know that at Step Up we pay attention not only education but to building social and life skills. We are trying to enrich traditional classes with some innovative forms aimed to develop presentation skills and creativity. On May, 20 Step-Up hold the 5th conference in the Get-to-know-a-country series. This year’s conference was dedicated to Germany and was the result of many hours of work by both students and teachers. Our students did a great job of summarizing the best of Germany’s diverse culture, people, industry and geography.
In a super ordinary presentation Group 1 staged the tale by Grimm Brothers about the straw, the coal and the bean. Thanks to students from Group 5-1, we were then transported to Berlin’s museum island, the centre of Germany’s world-renowned museum culture. Of course, no conference on Germany would be complete without a story of the country’s great composers and poets – Schubert, Beethoven, Bach, Wagner and Goethe. Students of Group 5-2 were our guides in a virtual tour to Germany’s cultural treasury. The country’s flora and fauna, as well as its geographical location, were described in the presentation by Group 6-2. Maxim M. showed a film he had produced himself about a BMW car factory – it was really cool! Finally, Group 7 revealed the secrets of German aviation in WWII demonstrating design of flying saucers and that of a flying wing.
The content and creativity of the presentations show a new level of competence amongst our students and their determination to master new topics. The conferences are not a competition, but an opportunity to share new knowledge on interesting topics with both students and teachers in a supportive environment.
I attached a Step Up Newsletter for April 2012 for your kind attention.
Thank you very much for all your support.
Sincerely,
Anna
Dear friends,
Hope you are well. Thank you for your continuing support. We are very grateful to you donations and inputs.
I would like to share some facts from our half-yearly progress report of the program you are supporting - "Giving Russian Orphans an Equal Start in Life". We have 127 students this year. All these teenagers and young adults are trying to realize their dreams of quality education. In September-December, 2011 we had 2,851 classes taught, including 296 classes taught by volunteers. Volunteers mostly come to teach English.
In this report I would like to tell you about one of the most spectacular events of this half of the year. On December, 19 we held a project conference for our students which had as its theme the history of inventions. It took place in the main hall of the Pokrovskie Vorota Cultural Centre, which made things even more serious!
The preparations for this event were very lively — each of our teaching groups chose a subject they were interested in and then prepared a report and a presentation. Our students presented the history of clocks, candles, pens, bicycles, rucksacks, photography, the history of the building of the Coliseum and so on. In total there were presentations by nine groups.
The first presentation was by students from psycho-neurological orphanages, who recounted to us an animated history of clocks. Dima (on the photo) shared the experience of telling the time using his own shadow. He didn’t only tell us about different types of clocks, but also showed them!
Sasha and Lyuba gave an exciting presentation on the history of planes and bicycles. The audience greatly enjoyed these presentations as the students showed them the things they were talking about and gave them various conundrums to chew on, forcing them to actively participate in the show.
We learnt many new facts: a stone was used as a first candle, that the Coliseum's arena was once flooded for sea battles, that phantom metro stations still exist, that heavy items should be packed at the bottom of your rucksack, and many other things.
The most memorable presentation was the one about Archimedes' life. From the conference hall our young actors transported us to Ancient Greece where Archimedes himself told us about his great inventions.
I also attach a Step Up Newsletter for January 2012 for your kind attention.
Thank you very much for all your support.
With warm regards,
Anna
Project Reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
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