Project Description

I will be going to Cumbaya Ecudaor teaching english to children. I will also be teaching art, school subjects, american culture and learning to embrace theirs. The program I will be travelling with is called Volunteers for Peace. It is based out of Vermont.

Project Description

EMPOWERMENT

Using movement arts as a platform for individual and global change, this project will simultaniously create documentation to raise public awareness of both the use of therapeutic movement modalities and the issues of disadvantaged youth.

General Outline and Populations Served:

This project serves disadvantaged youth, 4-21 years of age who would not otherwise have access to therapeutic movement services or exposure to movement arts. To qualify for services clients must have financial need AND have experienced or be currently experiencing one or more of the following: homelessness, extreme poverty, abuse or neglect, assault or out of home placement.

The main focus area of this project is inner city Seattle, Washington. EMPOWERMENT will additionally serve impoverished youth in the tiny village of Lo De Marcos, Mexico with the goal of creating positive international relationships and global community building.

If awarded, this grant will specifically fund a three week summer intensive, offered free of charge to all youth of Lo De Marcos. Intensive will include instruction in martial arts, yoga and English. Additionally, youth participants will be offered the oppurtunity to appear in a documentary film. Funding will help provide instructional materials, healthy snacks and appropriate clothing to participants.

Modality:

This project focuses on the movement arts (yoga, dance, martial arts, gymnastics...) as therapeutic modalities. Through out history, movement has been used as an important mode of self-expression and healing, although only recently has it become formally recognized as therapeutic. Most therapy modalities are designed to address only a specific group of issues, while movement therapy is used across the board to treat a huge spectrum of disorders. A client of movement therapy may see the same clinician for depression, stuttering and rehabilitation of a broken hip. Movement based therapy is perhaps the most holistic of the art therapies, engaging clients emotionally, mentally and spiritually through physical stimulation. Movement therapies are used with clients of all ages, but may be especially beneficial to children, who experience the world strongly through physical experience and have limited verbal abilities.

Movement therapy is quickly generating interest through out the world and the numbers of practitioners and clients are growing. Research in the field is still very limited however, and the movement arts as well as therapeutic movement are generally not accessible to high-risk or low income populations. This project will begin to bridge that gap, while generating needed research and documentation.

This project offers multiple choices and opportunities to involve and empower youth in the movement arts and \ or therapeutic movement. By giving voice, visibility and resources to those in need, while simultaniously allowing them to gather tools and experience to build power in their own futures, systemic change will be created through the arena of movement arts and therapeutic movement.

(This project offers 'therapeutic movement' defined as using the movement arts to help create healing or growth around specific issues, as oppossed to 'movement therapy' because session leaders will not be master level therapists and sessions are not designed to provide or take the place of professional psychotherapy).

All EMPOWERMENT programs will be offered to participants free of charge. Programs include:
- Youth Leadership, training and employment.
- Therapeutic Movement Groups and Private\ semi-private sessions.
- Movement Arts scholarships
- Documentary film
- Research on the affects of movement therapy
- International Community Building

International Community Building:

EMPOWERMENT first offered movement oppurtunities to the impoverished youth of Lo De Marcos, Mexico in February 2008 and will continue to reach out to this community, reflecting the desire to uplift and create change globally.

Project Description

Most people are under the misconception that Germany is a Christian country. Unfortunately, they are mistaken. Even though 65% of the German population claims to be christian, the actual percentage is lower. A majority of the population only join a church because they get a tax reduction. The harsh reality is that it is extremely difficult for a teenager to live out a Christian life. Sprachcamp is a place for high school students that are Christians and even non-Christians to come and build new relationships. High school students come from all over Germany to grow at Sprachcamp. The students look forward to constructing new friendships with other kids their age who are going through the same challenges in life. Sprachcamp provides the campers with counselors who always create a welcoming enviroment. There are two separate groups of campers. After one week of camp the second group arrives. Each camp is a week long and invites a hundred kids to come and share the Sprachcamp experiences with us.
Another benefit to Sprachcamp is that these German kids are given the opportunity to improve their English. The staff at Sprachcamp is filled with both Germans and Americans. The teenagers love hanging out with the Americans and getting to know more about the culture. The campers get to experience cohabiting with the American staff. English classes provide an understanding of grammar and an exploration of the language to the students. Each student is placed in a language group with their level of efficiency in English. These groups play games in English and opens up different conversations which develops their vocabulary. At the same time, conversing with the Americans helps their accents and fluency. We teach them song lyrics and create music videos for each language group, which allows the German campers to think in english in a fun and unique way. The fascinating fact about Sprachcamp is that not every camper that attends knows English. We are communicating with these students by breaking the language barriers. They understand our love, friendship, and compassion and it reachs out to them.
At Sprachcamp there is such an intimate bond between the Germans and Americans. Camp is a truly remarkable concept, because it reaches out to these kids to such a great extent. Most of these teenagers have had a hard life, some of them have lost their parents in the last couple of years. This camp means so much to them, because they know that they will always have friends across the world and a place where they are accepted for who they are. Sprachcamp is really somewhere where these German students find comfort. A majority of them have a difficult time scraping up the money to go, the price for a week of camp is only one hundred euros. However, one hundred euros for one family can be a couple weeks worth of food, or money saved up for gasoline. For families to be willing to give up their money to send one child to camp for a week, that just demonstrates how much this camp is worth.
I have an intense passion for this camp. I am aware that I am merely a teenager, but I have huge ambitions. I am compelled to expand Sprachcamp and reach out to more teenagers. My first time at Sprachcamp I was suprisingly embraced. I am half African American and half Chinese. I was absolutely terrified about attending Sprachcamp, because of Neo-Nazis and being persecuted. Then I realized this is so much bigger than me. These kids taught me self humility and the importance of serving and loving others. My heritage helps me see the camp at a different perspective from the rest of the staff. I can see how accepting these students are by the way they embraced me. A couple campers told me that I was the only African American person that they had ever seen in person, and that they loved the fact that I was there. I have a burning love for this country and it's people and I want to do anything and everything that I can to give more teenagers the oppurtunities they deserve.

Project Description

Free English classes are offered to our community two nights a week. With atleast fifty students in attendanace, our services have helped immigrants from more than 15 nations. Being in Texas, most of our students are from Mexico, but some are from Asia as well. Our volunteer program began two and a half years ago by college students and has been run solely by college students ever since. Every class, we come face to face with the desperate need for these men and women to learn English. They need jobs to provide for their families. They need to be able to call the doctor when their children get sick. They need to be able to function in society by doing the basic things like grocery shopping and inviting other children to their child's birthday party. They need friends in this country that is so familiar to us but so foreign to them.

Project Description

The Global Language Group, also known as Global Languages, is a non-profit, official student organization of The George Washington University (GW). It was founded by GW student Andrew Brown in September 2005, in effort to develop cooperation within the community through the education of international languages and cultures.

Breaking down the language and culture barriers is the first and most important step to bringing people together around the world. The organization's mission is to increase global awareness and break down culture and language barriers, by making the education of language and culture accessible to the public, in an effort to foster a global community.

One important objective of the Group is to help the community see far beyond language barriers and put foreign languages to a practical, cultural use from which individuals can truly benefit. In effort to help bridge the gap between cultures, native speakers teach free language and culture classes.

What began with Brown teaching five to ten languages by himself has now become an endeavor involving approximately 230 volunteer teachers, offering free classes in 53 different languages. In addition to supplementing the University’s instruction of common languages, the Group teaches more exotic and rare languages that are scarcely taught at any language institute or university in the United States.

Global Languages offers Survival Skills and Language Immersion classes. All classes are free of charge and taught by trained volunteer instructors. In addition to offering free language classes, Global Languages offers weekly cultural events including Ambassador Speaker Panels, Embassy visits, workshops, guest lecture series, Survey of Languages lecture series, fair-trade open-air markets, foreign film screenings, and a number of other events.

In its first six months, the organization quickly grew to a membership of over 3,000 GW students, staff, and faculty. As Global Languages opened its programs to the public in April 2006, it received a remarkable increase in membership as many members of the Washington, DC community began to participate.

The GW Student Activities Center's September 2006 assessment quoted registered members to be over 7,200, including the large amount of members from the community. This number also includes an approximate 250 volunteer staff members, of which over 230 are volunteer instructors. Many of the individuals reflected in the general membership are those who participate in Global Languages cultural events. The number of members participating specifically in the language classes is included.

Registration for Global Languages Immersion classes went from over 100 students in the fall of 2006, to approximately 350 students in the spring of 2007, to 540 in the summer of 2007, to a record 1,100 plus students in the fall of 2007.

This overwhelming increase in general membership as well as class registration placed Global Languages as GW's largest student organization. A growth of this magnitude in such short time is clear proof of the importance of foreign languages and cultures and their place in the GW and Washington, DC community.

Global Languages is the recipient of multiple awards at GW, including the Pyramid Award for Student Organization of the Year, Excellence in Diversity, and (twice) the Walter G. Bryte Achievement Award, which recognizes outstanding leadership, dedication, and service exemplifying the ideals of the United States of America and the George Washington University. Additionally, Brown received the Baer Award for Individual Excellence, the Walter G. Bryte Achievement Award, and The George Washington Award, the highest honor/award at The George Washington University.

Project Description

As a young person entering my career I feel that the human connection is one of the most decayed elements of world. Choosing a career as an English teacher was imperative to me because of this. Story, the human condition, and our experiences together as a race are so eloquently displayed in many of the pieces of literature we have in our collective history. The knowledge and connection found in these texts is imperative to all our relationships together, to better understand the entire scope of the human condition. Thereby causing better relationships between individuals, their situations, and the practical analysis of those situations. All of these skills are inherent in the pursuit of literature.
My life will be devoted to bringing these texts and sources to young people who may not have that advantage in any other form. I plan to dedicate my career to working with underprivileged or disadvantaged youths to bring them toward a positive experience with the written word so they can pursue healthy interactions with each other and the world. I'm fully aware I'm not a traditional candidate for this grant, as I'm entering my student teaching at a traditional high school, and am sincerely hoping to transfer to non-traditional educational intuitions after I'm fully accredited. As this is a community grant I can't stress enough how important community is to me, and how strongly I intend to enforce the link of community and the cannon for the duration of my career. I truly feel there are few positions as important in a community as the station of educators and the pupils who teach them.

Thank you so much for you time and consideration,
Britany Belden

Project Description

Our goal is to make Shakespeare widely available across the nation and, more importantly, widely enjoyed and understood. Too often the Bard is ignored or considered too difficult to understand when in reality his works are just as relevant today as they were in his time. We believe that Shakespeare is one of history's greatest authors and that attending a performance of his works should be pain-less and dare we say enjoyable. We plan to travel for 10 weeks this summer with eight actors completely directing, producing, and acting out three shows at each stop, charging a $5 adult admission and free for children under 10.

Project Description

THIS IS THE OPPORTUNITY OF A LIFETIME! Travel to West Africa this summer, for a nominal fee, experience a five week cultural submersion and an amazing volunteer experience. Founded in 1999 by several Princeton University students, the GEP (Ghana Education Project) has sent over 75 volunteers across 4 universities to the coast of Ghana. While there, the volunteers have assisted communities in establishing eight community-run libraries. We're looking for volunteers to live in the communities and tutor English in these libraries! You will also have the opportunity to visit El Mina Slave Castle, Lake Bosomtwi and Kakum National Park and meet Ghanaian leaders, including ministers of State. Do NOT miss this opportunity to form lasting bonds with Ghanaian students, community members and other volunteers! VISIT www.ghanaeducation.org for more details about this organization. For more information about the trip, contact AJ Whitman at
WE LOOK FORWARD TO WELCOMING YOU INTO THE GEP FAMILY!