Training week for Summer Camp Volunteers

This is the first English version in our blog!

This entry involves informing the world about our summer camp. CASA Promoción Juvenil has been summer camps for years now, if I’m not mistaken this is the 11^th edition. This is my third year coordinating a summer camp and I am glad to say we have worked hard in making every year better and better!

We began this year planning a few months ago with general ideas of what we wanted to work on this year. My training at the East Side Institute really influenced how we did our summer camp this year. Last year in our week long training course for our young volunteers we were very concerned about providing them with the knowledge and skills needed for working with kids, and although it was valuable to have that this year we approach it totally different. For starters we developed the training course with our volunteers as an exploration of childhood, learning and development and community, so we spend more time playing and having conversations which was very refreshing for our young crowd who expected a lecture. These conversations were so rich they covered the topics we talked about last year and then some. In terms of skills, we played and performed different scenarios with kids, so rather than just giving steps regarding how to play, we actually played and performed, which was very valuable. Finally we work hard in creating community with a group of young and committed youth with different backgrounds, so different in fact that there are few opportunities for them to meet let alone to have conversations and play. The result was inspiring, it was remarkable that even when having completely different points of view they where willing to share their experiences, their lives, their passions. Lois Holzman's image of overlapping zones of proximal development comes to mind, each day was an opportunity to perform a head taller, including my self and our team at CASA. The five days went flying fast!

We are half way through the summer camp! (already!) and I will be sharing more as I get a chance to write. For know I’ll just add that we collectively composed a theme for our camp. The song was performed by Claudia, Ponce and Mario on voices, Agustin on guitar, my self on percussion and editing, and screams by volunteers and children in the camp. Click here to down load “¡Lo vamos a lograr!”