GYPSY SOUL: My Work: Formal Edition

Hello everyone! It has been a long time since I posted anything about work on my blog. So I want to tell you all what is going on with me. Well, I am crazy busy. This past week I started implementing, not one by two, grant projects and turned in two new grants applications I wrote – all in one weekend! (I am calling this the formal edition because I have just written the bone facts of what I am doing. However, in a few days the informal post, i.e. not just the facts, but my experiences, is to come. So stay tuned.)

So first my project I am working on is an Environmental Project, it is a 6 month long project. For six weekends, for 7 hours every Saturday and Sunday, we are training 21 youth, from 7 different schools – 3 in Imishli city and from 4 villages, about Environmental issues. Part of their trainings include creating art projects with recycled materials and creating a power point presentation. After the trainings, the youth are supposed to create a kind of environment club at their respective schools with their class mates. Each youth is supposed to give a presentation we help them create (based on the information they learned during the trainings) to their classmates and come up with an environmental clean up project idea. Within each school the youth with the best idea will be given a budget of 300 USD to implement their project (we would be helping them implement their project.)

The other project is United Nations club. This project actually started last spring but was shut down by the Minister of Education this summer. So we are basically restarting with the final conference set for 12 December 2009. For this project I am working with university students from Baku who studied abroad for 1 year in America in high school. They come down every Sunday to work with the Imishli youth in meeting our project goals. This club is based off the UN’s millennium goals, instead of creating a mock United Nation’s General Assembly meeting as are the aim of most United Nations clubs. Both projects I have faced and facing several challenges, but there are successes, too. The projects are very challenging in their own ways, but I am excited about what we are teaching the youth. Needless to say my weekends are full for a while, in addition to my other weekly clubs (which meet on Saturdays and Mondays). Below I have posted some pictures from each project.

Working on a collage project - Environmental Project