Children’s Program

During one of the Humanitarian Committee meetings the youth introduced the idea of creating and implementing a program for the children of the village. This idea was not a part of the original Initiative, but it was brought up by the youth, created by the youth and implemented by them as well. The children’s program, which included younger children, took place every Tuesday and Thursday from 10:30am-5pm.  


The program began with an exercise at 10:30am. After a few heated debates, one of the youth made the argument that children needed to do an exercise to “wake up” and get energy in the beginning of the day, which is why they decided to begin the day with some physical activity. Two youth were responsible for facilitating the exercise of the day.  The exercises were followed by the English class, which was scheduled from 11:00am-12:00pm for the level one group.  The day continued with a puzzle club, which took place from 12:00-1:00pm. I saw that the youth/children never got tired of building puzzles and it remained one of the most favorite activities during the entire summer. Sometimes the youth would work individually, but most of the time they worked in a group setting. I taught them strategies on how to approach building the puzzles more efficiently. 


Break was scheduled from 1-2pm, which allowed enough time to go home for lunch. After lunch we began the coloring club, which was scheduled from 2-3pm. Once they had completed the coloring of the images, they taped over 200 pages of their colored work to their classroom wall. They were very proud of their work and were happy to display it as the wallpaper of their classroom.  The reading hour was scheduled from 2-3pm. The youth would take turns in reading stories to children. The last activity of the program was scheduled from 4-5pm, which was a movie-screening hour. Sometimes the youth would choose to watch educational material and other times they chose to watch cartoons.  


An average of 3 youth were responsible for each hour of the children’s program. For example, during the coloring club, 2 youth were responsible for distributing the markers and coloring books to the program participants and then collecting them at the end of the hour to store them in their proper space. In addition, the youth made a flyer to publicize the program in the village. They distributed the flyers to parents who had young children and they also posted them in the village, including the entrance of the community center of Tsmakahogh.