by LHI Volunteers Davide and Thomas
Davide and Thomas started week two by introducing the book Stuck by Oliver Jeffers to the campers.
If you missed Part I, check it out here.
Two of our amazing international volunteers, Thomas from the UK and Davide from Italy, have been spending their summer volunteering at an LHI-sponsored community center in Basarabeasca, Moldova. We are excited to share Thomas and Davide’s travel journal, starting from week 2!
July 31st 2023, Monday, Basarabesca, Moldova
LHI volunteers – second week report
The second week in Basarabeasca marked the beginning of our leading our own activities within the community center. We decided to focus on the group of children participating in the daily summer camp, and thought it would be helpful to build most of our activities around a story.
We started with reading a very short picture book to the group, reading in English while providing a Russian translation. The story, Stuck by Oliver Jeffers, is about a little boy that gets his kite stuck in a tree, and, in trying to get it back, throws into the same tree a long list of objects, from the most ordinary to the most absurd. From here, we led several activities, all aimed at both helping the children learn English and having lots of fun at the same time! We made flashcards with vocabulary from the story, learned to make our own kites, drew the tree from the story and along with all the objects the kids would choose to throw at it. All along, we tried to constantly practice the vocabulary from the story.
The campers were excited to try out the kites they made using the story Stuck as inspiration!
The results were extremely positive: kids participated with interest, had fun, and played together while learning some English. On one of the last days of the week, Sonia, a girl from Ukraine, even created her own game, using ours as an inspiration. Our original flashcards had drawings, English vocabulary words, and their translation in Russian. Sonia took this idea a step further, making cards in Ukrainian and Russian to play with us and the other children.
Campers created their own version of the tree in stuck and had a great time deciding what they would throw into the tree.
At the end of the second week, relationships with the staff of the center were also very positive. Day after day, they started to trust us more and give us more responsibility, both inviting us to participate in their activities and giving us the space to implement ours. At the end of the week, for instance, they asked us to organize the outside sport morning activities for the day.
The town of Basarabeasca has been very welcoming. People ask us what we are doing here, and they are glad to know we are volunteers. Even if it has been just two weeks, we already feel that we are having an impact on the community.