Highlights of Activities I have done in the Last 6 Months! I will try to keep them in some order, from when I first came to present!
1. Lived with my amazing Island Mother for the first 2 Months!
2. Became an Official United States of America Peace Corps Volunteer
3. Started Michelle’s Birthday Club- It has gone one five consecutive months in a row. It is designs to celebrate any birthday from children ranging from Birth to Twelve Years Old. On average there is about 20-30 children there. My Island Mom and I run it each month with the help of older teenagers! Every month all of the children are invited but we sing to the Birthday Children of the Month! During the Party we play with Water Balloons, do a craft project, participate in other running around games, and have juice, pizza, popcorn, and cake. Each child leaves with a sweetie in their hand
6. Moved out of my fantastic Island Mother’s home into my own two bedroom apartment about 5 minutes driving from my Island Mom’s home or 15 minutes walking. It is in the next village over.
5. Started working three days a week at my Work Site. My Work Site is an agency based in town that works with Youth on the National Level. We work hand in hand with other Youth Groups and plan larger activities for the youth of the whole island not just for specific group
6. Started working a primary school (Grades K-6) once a week. While I am there, I was assigned to a teacher and assist any children who need extra help with an assignment. In the absent of the teacher I would run the classroom (there is few to no substitute teachers in Dominica), so if I was not there another teacher would have to manage two classrooms. Many days during break time you could find me sitting on the steps reading books!
7. Started my ‘Little Listeners, Big Readers’ program. The structure of the program is, I have 3 to 5 pre-school age students sit in a circle with one higher primary school child. The higher primary school child will read about 3 books or 30 minutes to the pre-school age children. The goals behind the program are to raise the literacy rate of the ‘little listeners’ by finalizing them with different stories, words, etc. In addition, the goals is to improve the confidence of reading for the ‘Big Readers’ and raise their literacy rate. In addition, it gives the ‘Little Listeners’ a role model to look up to and introduces service learning to the ‘Big Readers.’
8. At my worksite, I assisted in the running of a Leadership Workshop that took place in 6 different villages in Dominica. My duties included compile the data from the surveys, making sure the facilitating were running on time, and learning myself about different leadership styles and techniques. Also, it served as a great tool of networking and meeting different youth in Dominica.
9. Did a dinner once a month with my landlord’s daughter and her good friend introducing different cultures of food. So far, we have had Italian, Mexican, and Traditional ‘Fourth of July’ foods!
10. Started going to Village Council meetings to have a better understanding of what was going on in the Village.
11. Worked with Keira’s Book Club. Which is a program designed to get more books in the primary and secondary school’s library. There was a contest to design t-shirts and logos for the Book Club
12. Somewhere a long the line I learned how to make home made bread, pizza dough, pancakes, and various different sweet treats
13. Planned, organized, and ran a two week long summer camp for 70, 4-13 year old children. The name of the club was “Arts and Expression: Changing Lives.” During the camp we did numerous craft projects, recreational games, guest speakers, and ended the event with a graduation and a display of all of the crafts
14. Started a mini Arts and Craft Program in my village. We meet once a week for about an hour to two hours and do a different craft project each time. We usually ended the day with coloring, drawing, and/or word searches. We have made: sand art in bottles, tie-dye, homemade clay, piñata, and decorated some cookies
15. Spend two days helping out at a Pre-School camp where we tie-dyed, made yummy ‘dirt pies’ and made a village out of cardboard boxes
16. Spend the day at a Special Olympics activity
17. Currently I am helping to plan a Youth Festival that will show off all of the talent the Youth of Dominica have. By having an island wide Talent Show and then other local bands/groups perform
What is up next….
1. Continuing the “Little Listeners, Big Readers” program and hoping to expand to two to three pre-schools instead of one. Getting more of the students involved!
2. Doing a weekly arts and crafts project with the students at the Primary School (I am not sure if I will do it for the WHOLE school or just different grades, or maybe each week do a different grade so they do a craft project once a month- we shall see)
3. Do one-on-one tutoring with the Primary School students either on Maths or Literacy. Each session would be about 30 minutes and I would be working with ALL grade levels
4. Doing a Character Counts program in the Primary School. It is a program centered on six different pillars: caring, honesty, respect, responsibility, and I cannot think of the last two on the top of my head. This would be a program that myself and other teacher would be working on together for ALL the students in the Primary School
5. Once or twice a month spending the day in my village’s pre-school
6. Doing a traveling book club with Secondary Students
7. Have the Primary/Secondary school students write and draw the story of Dominica in their eyes
8. I want to start a Women Empowerment Group or a Girls self- esteem group
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