Juggling requires dexterity

Starting with two newly bought tennis balls each, we trained our kids a juggling. A good exercise to increase concentration and dexterity. After a period of 2 hours, we could sort out three very talented kids who succeeded with 3 balls a few times. In order to cement and improve their skills, we borrowed them the balls for further training during the week.

Furthermore, Mako Nikoshwa brought the “Beat” of the song dealing with kids and instructed the kids how to sing to it.

Due to the success in the football game last weekend, one of our coaches, believing in the potential of the IriCreArt (The Color of Development creates Art) participants, founded the team “FC IriCreArt” which he will start to train also during the week.

Besides that, we continued with traditional dance and painting lessons as usual and are proud to announce that we have an official logo now. Find it below in the images!

Cheering can be as much fun as playing

For this weekend a football match was scheduled. It was a success for the IriCreArt-Team, winning 2 – 0 against the team of the S.O.S children village, .

Apart from our team which did quite well, the group feeling, which was underpinned by the vociferous cheering of the other participants of our program, was most encouraging.

The fans were supporting our team warmly and were being passionately committed to the game.

By shouts such as “Tufite Swagga, tufite Swagga...”, we have the swagga, we have he swagga, they backed the IriCreArt-Player successfully.

After the game the team as well as the supporters were rewarded by fruits being handed out. So much fun this weekend, events like this definitely have to be repeated! 

 

Soon hopefully official

The project continues as normal. Every weekend we renew our bond with the kids and we are approaching. In order to increase the identification with the group as well with the project in total we are soon going to produce an project song including some of our kids singing as a choir. The latter will be realized with the Rwandan Superstar and friend of the project Mako Nikoshwa. Everybody who is interested in listening to some of his nation wide hits in advance, is welcome to visit his page on ReverbNation (http://www.reverbnation.com/control_room/artist/3330712/songs).

In this weekend´s program we just undertook little changes. As we had difficulties to reserve the football pitch of the “Croix Rouge” here in Kacyiru, originally purposed to be a shelter for refugees, we moved to the terrain of the S.O.S Children Village which even offer a much nicer playground.

Unfortunately, the “Children´s Corner” conducted by the Goethe Institute and focusing on Reading and Storytelling could not be conducted because of the Kigali´s new city planing which forces the German Cultural Institute to move places. Bad news, but today we will negotiate about the future collaboration.

Much more gratifying is the process of the registration which is now being accelerated. I think the most important assignment will be done in just a view weeks! Than IriCreArt (The Color of Development creates Art) will be finally official.

Unfortunately, we forgot to take photos this weekend, therefore more will be presented in the next article on this blog iricreart.blogspot.com.

Professional traditional dancers as role models

A show with traditional dances and music instruments being played enriched the weekend´s program of the Atelier this time. Thanks to a partnering project, a professional performance had been showed to our children this Sunday, hopefully serving as a motivation for the kids to improve the own dancing skills. At least the young dancers were impressed.

Besides that, we continued the garden project in order to supply Environmental Education. Flower-beds, interrupted by little soil paths, were laid out and marked by wood sticks. Now it is still a question of time to see the first results.

Moreover, our theatre teacher was able to study a new sketch with the kids. That rose a lot of attention among the kids.

The female dance teacher for our girl group, which was recently added to our former boys group and is still growing, taught the girls a lot of new steps. Unbelievable, but the girls seem to learn much faster then all the other groups, they were able to show a quite sophisticated show in the end of the weekend.

We also continued singing lessons for everybody and guitar lessons for chosen students being tall enough to handle an adult guitar.

Concerning our groups, I have to announce that we grouped the kids by age now:

Group 1: Girls from 6 - 10

Group 2: Girls from 11 - 14

Group 3: Boys from 6 - 10

Group 4: Boys from 11 - 12

Group 5: Boys from 13 – 15

We undertook this division to be able to concentrate better on each individual and mostly in order to have groups of kids with the same mental skills and maturity.

At hand some pictures to described activities of IriCreArt (The Color of Development creates Art). 

 

Embellishing the Atelier by a kitchen Garden

This weekend our cooperation with the Goethe Institute started. From now on the Goethe Institute will supply our children with Reading and Storytelling lessons on Saturdays from 8 to 10 am.

As in Rwandan schools pupils are not to much integrated (approximately 50 pupils sit in one class in average), we see our newly added program point as quite useful to animate and interest our kids for books and give them the possibility to read out aloud to a larger group.

Another innovation is the kitchen garden we laid out this Sunday with the help of Adrian, a German volunteer who works for the environmental NGO ACNR and carried out other gardening projects, for example in the S.O.S Village des Enfants. With the garden we are trying to implement “Environment Education” and also, as it is an kitchen garden, “Health Education” in our work. We are looking forward to see the first sprigs growing, to accompany the growth period, to harvest the vegetables and finally to prepare a healthy dish. Our motto now: Patience and tender care! Find photos of the action attached to his article!

Apart from the two mentioned news, we continued the regular program! 

 

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!