6 Weeks In... 2 More To Go

Greetings from Georgetown.

Joe, Sydney & Alyssa walking along 63 Beach.

The last couple days have been super busy. Last weekend, Sydney and Leslie travelled to Berbice to see how their Project works and to hang out with Joe and Alyssa. We attended GUYSUCO Training College and saw them teach an extremely informative mental health lesson on Friday evening. Saturday, we were fortunate enough to have just the right amount of spare time to go and visit the only swimmable beach in Guyana; 63 Beach. It was lovely and the water in this part of the Atlantic Ocean was so warm – we could even see Suriname from our spot on the beach! On Sunday, we were lucky enough to go with Joe and Alyssa to see how the Letter Kenny Youth Friendly Space works and got to hang out with some of the local kids there and engage in a Monkey-in-the-Middle game. Emanuel, one of the men who runs the Space, then took us on a walk around neighboring villages and it was lovely to see yet another part of this beautiful country.

Joe, Alyssa & Sydney playing Monkey-in-the-Middle at the Letter Kenny Youth Friendly Space in Berbice.

We continued our curriculum at Valmiki Vidyalaya Hindu School on Monday and set up a time for Beth and Leslie to go and teach the teachers our material so that our lessons can be continued to be taught after we leave – perhaps one of the most important goals QHO has. We were thrilled that the headmaster asked us to do this and can't wait to donate all of the resources QHO has compiled. 

We are now starting to finish up our curriculum with many classes and we have decided as a team to give out certificates to students and schools for completing a Queen's Health Outreach Course. As a special treat for the students, we have also decided to bring in treats and prizes on the last day as a QHO Graduation Party!

Arash and Leslie finishing up the curriculum at Community College.

Arash and Leslie completed their curriculum at Community College. We presented each student with a QHO certificate for completing the entire curriclum and gave them lollipops! They seemed to be quite happy that we were there and their Headmaster, Mr. Amsterdam, gave us many Thank-Yous for coming to teach his students.

Sydney starting off the "QHO Graduation" Party.

Chase Academy has included our material as its own course at the school, known as “Moral Education”. We teach a total of 5 classes there; Form 1, Form 2, Form 3 and two Form 4 classes. Since it is a required subject for the students to learn, we were asked to prepare a short Quiz based on the material we had already taught them as a way for the over seeing teacher to generate a mark for them. This week was the week we were administering the quiz and we are feverishly busy now trying to get them all marked (we really feel like teachers!). On Tuesday afternoon Ms. Toney took us to the Masjid in Allboystown. The Masjid is new to the community. The Imam who runs it wants to transform the space into an all purpose community centre by trying to recruit gym equipment, ping pong tables, as well as desks for after-school programs. The Masjid also runs a medical outreach program that includes dental and physical checkups for the members of the community. On Thursday, Beth went to help out with the medical outreach day by doing some of the administrative work required for visiting a doctor.

That evening, Ms. Toney surprised us once again and took us to a Guyanese dance class at the West Ruimveldt Centre where we learnt an African dance. We were all soooo nervous but it turned out to be so much fun and we really enjoyed ourselves. Wednesday was another day of surprises from Ms. Toney, as she took us to yet another dance class where we learnt “Ballroom Dancing” aka Salsa. We quickly caught on and had lots of fun doing it.

Arash and Leslie's Form 1 & 2's at Royal Academy.

Friday was our last day at both Sophia Primary school and Royal Academy. It is really hard to say goodbye to our students but it is something we knew would have to happen eventually. We brought in  chips and pop and had a last class “party” with the kids. They all asked us to come back next year and said that they would miss having us here. The four of us got a wonderful appraisal from the Headmaster at Royal Academy sincerely thanking us for taking the time to volunteer and teach the students. It is so lovely to be so well received from the community.

Sydney and Beth's Form 3 & 4's at Royal Academy.

This morning, we all enjoyed ourselves at the East Ruimveldt Community centre where we set up a cricket game for the kids to play on this beautiful and sunny Saturday. Sydney is proving to be quite the cricket player now – she is awesome at batting and the kids love teaching her more and more since she is the best player out of all 4 of us. We are now patiently awaiting Joe and Alyssa’s arrival from Berbice as they have to come to Georgetown for the night to take care of some logistical matters that they can’t tend to back in Berbice.

Sydney the Cricket Superstar!

Only 13 more days of project left and time is flying! More updates to come as we finish up the 2012 Guyana Project.

Love from the Georgetown Team: Leslie, Beth, Sydney & Arash