Improving every weekend

As we sent our children to a reading and storytelling holiday program of the Goethe Institute which is located nearby our workshop, we can now luckily report that they were so amazed by the “stage performance” the kids delivered at the end of the 2 weeks, that they decided to be our partners (not yet officially confirmed) and continue the reading and storytelling program also during school times. That is why our kids will go from now on to the Goethe Institue to be supervised and trained every Saturday from 9 – 12 am.

The weekend program was also quite successful because we could offer new program points to the participants of IriCreArt (The Color of Development creates Art). For the first time a Salsa teacher supported us, showing the kids the first basic steps. The Latin American music was quite relaxing and a good contrast to the fast and hectic movements of Modern Dance.

Additionally a break dance teacher came for the first time. He taught the kids the first basics, made an animating warm-up with the kids and won their admiration.

Both new teacher could convince with their pedagogic skills and the additional program points the offered. That is why we would like to keep them as our teachers. We are still in negotiations with them, how often they can come and so on...

I can also report that we are proceeding in the progress of getting registered as a local NGO.

Thanks a lot to Charlotte who is unfortunately leaving us soon, but was able to help us to compose the Statute, the Application Letter for the RGB (Rwanda Governance Board) and the Letter of Collaboration for the district. Good work!

At hand pictures from this weekend!

One, two, three – Act!

This weekend we were just able to supervise our kids on Saturday because the 19^th commemoration week reminding the Rwandan inhabitants of what happened in 1994 started taking place on Sunday. In the mentioned week it is not allowed to listen to loud music, make sport etc., so we could not maintain the program.

Still we had a very amazing Saturday because we engaged a theatre teacher for the first time. Isaack – the theatre teacher´s name – was really a lucky find. He is an all rounder – knows how to dance traditionally, how to teach acting, how to sing and write songtexts and how to deal with kids. He was directly starting to coach the children of IriCreArt (The Color of Development) in singing the “IriCreArt song”, which worked out quite well in the end. Then he taught traditional dance and in the end he played theatre with the participants of our program.

Furthermore, we were supported by two voluntary working Belgians, Charlotte and Brandon, in Modern and Traditional Dance. With them, the children had a lot of fun and were even able to present what they have learned in a very short time in the afternoon.

Moreover, Kibe and me, Marvin, started visiting the families of our kids to find out all important information on the family background. So far, we visited 6 families, but we will continue questioning the parents in this week.

Another improvement is that we have more experienced and professionally working people on board who will to help us in registering our project properly, promoting and marketing it and improve our organization. So the next steps towards finding sponsors, partners or members will be done soon. 

 

Professional work means guaranteed success

In future we want professionalize our project IriCreArt (The Color of Development creates Art), therefore we are now starting to base our work more and more on documents. For that reason we developed a weekend´s program for our kids. It includes the program points Drawing & Painting, Theatre Playing, Modern Dance, common lunch, a leisure time program (board games, rope jumping, juggling, group games), Traditional Dance and Football.

Furthermore, we are going to conduct questionnaires with the kids as well as with their parents, to find more out about their family background, starting this week.

To guarantee the success of our project, we are also working on a participants list. The children who are really fond of our project and participating in it every weekend on Saturday and Sunday will be mostly considered because they are the ones who will profit continuously from the program and will be able to form out their talents in long term.

As we are still searching some teachers, we unfortunately could not fully maintain our program this weekend, but we are confident that it will work out next weekend. What our children enjoyed mostly this weekend was the lunch´s dessert: Pineapple , something they rarely or even never get in their families. We think it is very necessary to include vitamin-rich groceries in the diet, especially after playing football. At hand some pictures of our common lunch, new pieces and so on.