2014 Camp Week One!

Hello everybody!

My name is Joanne and I’m serving as Volunteer Coordinator for camp this summer. I’m an incoming 4th-year Architecture student at Virginia Tech, where I began my involvement with volunteer work in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. I will begin the blog this summer, and you will later also hear from our PeaceCorps Volunteer Amanda, and PeaceWorks Volunteer Taylor!

Last Friday, we ended week 1 with a quiz, followed by our newly-introduced field day! Our theme of the week was “Welcome to English Camp!” where we focused on greeting phrases, numbers, the alphabet, question words & phrases, days of the week, and our five rules of camp: raise your hand, listen, be respectful, share, and help clean up. Although it seems like it was a lot of information, our campers actually all scored around 90%-95% on their first quiz! 

The campers’ favorite activities this week were making cootie catchers with Taylor, singing “Five Little Monkeys” with me, and reading The Jungle Book with Amanda! This year, we are also implementing a camp prayer, which the kids learned very quickly! It goes like this…

Thank you for the friends we make.

Thank you for the food we eat.

Thank you for the birds that sing.

We give thanks for everything.

By Friday, a 10-year old returning camper, Milena, even led the camp prayer! A video of it is included in our Week One video. It’s wonderful to see how quickly and eagerly the campers learn. Although we had a smaller number of volunteers this week, the campers had a blast! After the field day on Friday, a few campers came up to me and said “Nos vemos mañana?” (See you tomorrow?) and I disappointed them with bad news that camp only runs Monday-Friday. So I’d say that Week One was pretty successful!

Here are a couple of ways you can keep posted with our activities:

• Like our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Change-My-Stars/201315789952371
• Follow our Twitter page: https://twitter.com/Change_My_Stars
• continue reading our blog!

Also, check out our Week One video! I apologize that most of the footage are from our Field Day, because I was leading a station myself. As we receive more volunteers, I will have a chance to film some more :)

https://vimeo.com/99569699

If you’re interested in volunteer, we are still accepting volunteers! For further information, please email: volunteer@esperanzameanshope.org

Thanks for reading, and a huge thanks to our very patient volunteers who worked with us this week: PCV Amanda, PWV Taylor, PCV Dallas, PCV Queenie, David, and ex-PCV Maria! We look forwarding to our new volunteers coming in for next week! :)