Clara Luna foundation, in February, held a workshop to engage community leaders in their own library projects. With your donations, we were able to train these community leaders in running a mobile library and childrens center in their communities and donate 100 childrens books for their own mobile library. In attendance were community leaders from six different communities that were affected and still are affected by last years earthquake.
Since this training, Clara Luna has made two trips to each of the six different communities to monitor and evaluate the success of our training and the mobile libraries. With great pleasure we can share that five out of our six mobile libraries are well on their way and have more than 50 children in attendance at their weekly activities. The sixth mobile library is still working on getting off the ground and this week, Clara Luna volunteers will spend extra time focusing on this community to help them succeed.
Clara Luna plans to continue to support these mobile libraries for the next year, aiding in fundraising, ideas for childrens activities, gaining support and participants. We look forward to what the next year holds for these libraries and all they great things they will do. And more importantly, the smiles they are bringing to children in the earthquake affected areas!
Our new school year started in May and the first two months have been off to a busy start. We are continuing with our regular programs, Kids Club, Youth Group, and English classes that more and more kids are showing interest in joining. In our kids club, we have reached 50 children on the attendance list!!!
Besides our regular programing, the past two months we have had two erase una vez events. These are events where parents and children come together for a night of reading out loud, a puppet show, exploring new book donations, and a presentation of that months crafts done during Kids Club. Our May event revolved around the environment and in June our event was all about monsters. We think it is safe to say children at Clara Luna are no longer scared of monsters!
In June, the girls in our youth group held an open house for two of the high schools in Puerto Lopez where they presented on topics they learned about from our stay away camp in April. Fifteen girls presented on seven different topics and impressed their classmates and professors. They taught the students about gender, stereotypes, rights, sexual education, and family planning. Our open house reached more than 250 students in the two high schools.
At the end of June, Clara Luna kids club took a field trip to Los Frailes. Los Frailes is part of Machalilla National Park and is a protected area. We went on a hike to learn about sub-tropical forests and ended our hike on the beautiful beach where the kids ran and played.
The past three months have gone wonderfully at Clara Luna, thank you to your donations and support. We can't wait to see what is in store for the next three months!
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In the beginning of April, our vacation courses at Clara Luna came to an end and kids went back to school. Over the summer vaction (February and March) Clara Luna held a total of six different clubs that youth could participate in; mural painting, guitar, environmental advocacy, journalism, dance, and a recycled art club. We had over 50 youth participating in our summer vacation courses.
In mural paiting, the youth worked on expressing emotion through art and the final project was to paint a mural in Puerto Lopez right next to the local high school. A mural that they designed and painted on their own!
In guitar, the students learned the basics and chords. By the end of the two months, they were each able to play a song on their own from memory.
In our environmental advocacy club the students learned about an animal each week that was native to our community Puerto Lopez and how that animal was being affected in its environment by humans, garbage, pollution, over-fishing, etc. At the conclusion of our vacation courses, they performed a play about turtle conservation something very important on the coast of Ecuador.
In journalism club the students learned what it takes to make a great article. They learned how to interview, write articles, take great photographs, and create a final article in the form of a blog. Each student choose one topic to write about and came up with a final article.
In our dance club, mainly girls (but a couple of boys once in a while) learned how to move their bodies to all different types of music. After a couple of weeks, the club decided to primarily focus on contemporary music. At the end of the summer vacation, they held a dance preformance with all they had learned.
And finally our recycled art club was busy all summer using their hands to make beautiful art out of primarily recycled materials. They made bracelets, candle holders, a bookshelf for Clara Luna, lamp shades and much more. Thanks to our very talented teacher, we have a lot of great recycled art!
The summer vacation courses were an absoute success for our first year. They achieved our goal of making sure youth were occupied during the summer break from school and they each learned something new, something they are not given a chance to learn during school. We can't wait to put on our vacation summer courses next year, bigger and better!
