TYO has succeeded in the 2010 Global Open Challenge and most importantly raised funds to provide transformative educational experiences to the children of Nablus most needy areas!! On the heels of this success, we have expanded the requested project budget to support TYO's 2011 winter/spring semester of early childhood and youth programming.
We hope you have enjoyed the first two reports from TYO, written by current interns living in Nablus, Palestine. We look forward to sharing news from the programs you are supporting direct from Nablus and hope you will keep in touch with us on GlobalGiving, Facebook, and our blog. This week you can read about: Ashwani's experience teaching Bollywood Dance to her students; Samee's walk through Balata Refugee Camp; and Julie's thoughts on being a vegetarian in Nablus. We would love to hear from you, so please feel free to comment, like, and share.
From all of us at TYO, thank you for your generous support this season and we wishing you and yours a happy and healthy 2011!
During the past weekend, I took my dance class along with Ashwini and her Art and Empowerment class to Banana Land, an amusement park in Jericho. During the trip from Nablus to Jericho, my volunteers kept the girls entertained and engaged on the bus by singing songs together. Once we arrived in Banana Land, Ashwini and I had both classes eat lunch and play games together in order to get to know each other, with the hope that the girls would bond over their shared interest in the arts and that the young adolescent girls from Ashwini’s class would take on a mentoring role for some of the younger girls in my class.
Thanks to the unseasonably warm weather in Jericho, most of the girls seized the opportunity to spend a good part of the afternoon splashing about in the swimming pool. Swimming was the highlight of the field trip for 11-year-old Jumana and 8-year old Asma’, as I suspect it was for many of the other girls who came with us to Banana Land. However, when I asked another student of mine, Labeeba, about her favorite aspect of the trip, she struggled to pick just one. “Everything!” she ended up pronouncing with a smile.
Following our weekend getaway to Jericho, the girls who attended the next class came back to TYO with increased focus and energy. We recently finished learning a half-minute hip hop dance routine in class, and my five classroom volunteers and I are now helping the girls to rehearse for an end-of-the-semester dance performance. In Jumana and Labeeba’s opinion, hip hop is the best part of dance class. Thanks to the hard work and determination that my most dedicated students bring to class each week, their passion for learning new forms of dance is really starting to shine through in their dancing!
- Julie
Julie is an intern at TYO Nablus.
As an American intern teaching the Beginning Photography class at TYO this semester, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know the 20 boys and girls in my class and having the chance to expose them to the joys of digital photography. It’s been a great experience because the kids, ordinarily loud and crazy, become instantly focused when handed a camera to work with.
In order to show them that photography can become a life-long hobby or even a useful job skill, we invited a professional photographer from the local community to come and speak to our class. Hassan Qamhia (http://www.flickr.com/photos/qamhia/), a professor at An-Najah University in Nablus and a budding professional photographer, visited us on Monday, November 29, and entertained the students with a slideshow of his beautiful photos taken around Nablus.
He also gave the kids some hands-on photography lessons. Everyone present greatly enjoyed Hassan’s presentation and gave him a resounding “Shukran” (thank you) at the end of class!
– Adrienne
Adrienne is an intern with Tomorrow’s Youth Organization. Originally from Ithaca, New York, she teaches the basic photography class with Triple Exposure.
“Triple Exposure” is a TYO initiative that aims to develop identity, awareness, and vocational skills among children and adolescents through teaching photographic expression and the production of public art.
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.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can recieve an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
