Project Sites

From the Santa Barbara, California, USA & Puerto Vallarta, Mexico Sister-Cities groups:

February 2008

Santa Barbara has a group of teenagers in Puerto Vallarta for a sister-city exchange.  They will be meeting up with Grupo Ecologico, an environmental group that Jan Olivas (the former Santa Barbara/Puerto Vallarta Sister City President), Rosanne, and I have been in contact with.  We have discussed the possibility of our teens and SB recycling experts coming to PV to be informed and involved with their recycling program efforts.  Now, that has partly happened with the teen exchange trip and Grupo Ecologico meeting.  The other good news is that a new Mexican state law requiring certain types of recycling went into effect at the start of the year--so our SB/PV teens will possibly have an easier time supporting these recycling efforts with their OWYP project.

From The Villa Verde School of Gracias, Honduras:

February 2008

Just this week we are being visited by the Medical Brigade. A group of doctors from the states, who come down 2 or 3 times a year to provide services to the campesinos. They are working on building a clinic. 2 of my students are volunteering with them by helping to translate for the doctors and patients. It’s a great experience. I am having them get information about specific services.

From The Riverside School of Lyndonville, Vermont, USA:

February 2008

Rather than doing OWYP each month, we've been doing it for weeks at a time each quarter, so we've done the following recently:

December: We really enjoyed working on the "Day in the Life" Pie Charts and we're looking forward to exchanging them with our sister school in Nigeria. It was enlightening as a teacher to see how my students spend their time. One of them didn't even have "homework" anywhere on his chart! 

January:  We had Zoe Gascon visit our class.  She works in a women's resource center in our town that helps women suffering from domestic abuse in particular.  She taught us about how domestic abuse is not always signs of outright violence, but the intent to exert power and control over your partner.  This can be done in lots of more subtle, private ways like coercion, intimidation, emotional abuse, using children, blame and economic control.  We learned that her organization, Umbrella, helps 400 women each year in our community.  We may invite Zoe back to ask her more questions and find out how we could serve their needs.  Attached is a picture from her visit and the Power and Control Wheel she shared with us.

February:  We read the story of Mrs. Jayalakshmi and worked on the concept map that goes with it.  The students had a much harder time filling in the causes and effects than we expected to.  We found Mrs. Jayalakshmi's story to be so specific that it was hard to generalize carefully.  We also read the report of the Vermont Comission on Women to find statistics about gender equality in our own state, like the extent to which women have health insurance, the bullying that girls face in school, and the percentages of women serving on public boards.  We found this report hard to make sense of as well, the statistics seemed miss leading and we ached for comparable information about men in our state.

March: We finished reading Mrs. Jayalakshmi's story.  We have begun to brainstorm ideas for a service project.  We're anxious to hear from our sister school about what they've been doing and how we might be able to support their efforts.

From Santa Barbara Sister Cities Student Exchange Program of Santa Barbara, California, USA:

January 2008

Happy New Year everyone!

May 2008 be all that you want it to be.  I wish for you what you wish for yourself!

About One World Youth Project:  before the holidays, we talked more about what it would take to initiate a recycling program in Puerto Vallarta..  With such a big undertaking, even with the support of Santa Barbara's state-of-the-art recycling center, we would need someone willing to spearhead and/or finance it.  Therefore, several of us decided to ask in our holiday e-letters if anyone was interested (or knew of someone who might be).  No responses yet, but I will keep you posted.  I met up with my group of teens about a week ago, specifically to discuss invasive plants and their removal, but it looks as if I will be the one again who reports on the OWYP curriculum portion of this meeting.  We spent a fair chuck of the time individually jotting down our personal time-lines on blank pieces of paper that had a line drawn horizontally through the middle.  The teens included the following on their timelines:  birthdays, significant trips, longer relationships, grandparent's deaths, things like games/races won, sibling births etc.

We also quickly compared notes about our pie chart "typical day," adding the quote by Annie Dillard who said, "As we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."  (Average hours of sleep= 7hrs and all had extracurricular activities of various lengths after same length of school, though time spent on homework and tv differed).  This activity was perfect for the new year because they had already thought a lot about New Year's resolutions.  We wrote down what we wanted our timelines to include in the future and discussed what we could do today that could give us small steps towards those goals.   We then switched gears by talking about our native plants and invasive plant species removal goals.  We look forward to making OWYP goals when the time comes to begin planning a project.

From Bishops College in Colombo, Sri Lanka:

December 2007

We just got some christmas/ new year greeting cards made for our club. I have been havng this idea for some months and I am really happy that we were finally able to carry it out!

These cards include an awareness message about AIDS- which is our focus MDG and were bought from the deaf and blind school in Sri Lanka.

Therefore it serves three purposes.

1. An awareness message about AIDS is spread with the cards

2. Since the cards were bought from the deaf and blind school, we are supporting their school

3. A small sum of money would be collected for our future AIDS Awareness projects.

2 bombs just exploded today, so the country is in a big state of excitement and worry... Both exploded in Colombo and since it's the capital city everyone is really worried.. We just finished calling everyone to check if they were ok and we are still getting calls...   DON'T WORRY THOUGH.. Nothing major has happened.. Just gave you an update on Sri Lanka!!

November 2007

Well.... we've done quite a lot so far!!  

1.School assembly- In July we had a school assembly to create awareness about the OWYP in school. The assembly was a super success and everyone was totally impressed.  

2. Halloween fair- We had a halloween fair in collaboration with another club to collect money for the teacher's guild. We collected a sum of 36000 Rs.  

3.Cake sale- We sold cake and collected over 4000 rs.. Everyone considered the sale a super success.  

4. As an awareness project, we put up articles regarding AIDS, TB etc.. on our noticeboard that is maintained specially for OWYC in school.  

5. The project Proposal and the Bulletin are on their way and we have almost completed our bulletin. 6. We also did a presentation on IPEC  in school.

From the Perfect Youth Group of Arusha, Tanzania

UPDATE!  February 2008

November 2007

We are very honoured to share with you this happiness news for the Perfect youth group,it was saturday when we joing the MUSIC CROSS ROAD www.jmi.net and on Sunday was the was the Competitions day where there are more people competing in Difference Type of Music and the Perfect youth group ended become the Winner for the MUSIC CROSS ROADS  for the Northern Zone and they have to go to Dar es salaam on February for the National Competition and if they win they will be going to 4 African countries and then if they win they will be having Europian Tour for 10 Countries,so now its time for them to be serious in Practise just only

8weeks for Practise.Please we need your support for making all this successful,its not for only youth but also for MCW and OWYP GO Perfect youth Group its your time! Reporting from Nairobi in United Nations Conference Wish you all the Best PYG!

Yours Abdu Mohamed President of the Perfect youth Group & OWYP Project Ambassador

October 2007

Its my pleasure to have this chance to share with you what I have been focusing for  over past a month now,though things where to busy with me but all is well with our Project am happy for this:-

First  is about” THE WEEK OF YOUTH”

It was the week of youth where by all youth in Arusha had gathered and they had to share some youth experiences and they had many youth Leaders from different  groups and we had a chance to meet with the British Council and we had chance to talk with them.

The Special Guest was the Minister of youth ,Sports and Development Hon.Emanuel Nchimbi .See the Photos attached

Second is “THE UN DAY”

We had a Seminar as the Dicussion session where by we had about 70 youth attended and we had many issues we discussed about UN as follows:-

(i)Objectives of UN

(ii)Failures of UN

(iii)MDGs

(iv)World’s Problem like Wars

(v)Middle East Crises

And so many we had it was real amazing and everyone was Excited!

See Photos

Thanks One world youth Project.

Yours

Abdu Mohamed

Project ambassador OWYP

From the Port-au-Prince Youth Group of Port-au-Prince, Haiti:

October 2007

Port au Prince youth Group Participate to day to Stand up and speak out against Poverty  "COMBATONS LA POVRETE!!!!!!!!!

Fight Poverty in all it's form!

Combatons La Pauvrete dans toute ses Formes!

From the Simba Friends of Teshie, Ghana:

October 2007

The Simba Friends STAND UP against poverty!

From Mr. Andrew D. Kuwan, Country Coordinator, Network of African Youths for Development (NAYD):

Subject:  October 2007 Report on the UN MDGs    

Date:       November 15, 2007      

The NAYD-Liberia family in collaboration with her OWYP Sister School (Isaac A. David) students and staff met on the 5th, 19th, and 26th of October in carrying out the implementation of OWYP and the UN MDGs-message.   These programs that were all indoor, brought together primary students, senior school staffs of Isaac A. David. A four person delegation of NAYD-Liberia headed by the country coordinator, Mr. Andrew D. Kuwon, explained the significant of the One World Youth Project and the UN MDGs. Programs were highlighted on cultural exchange, its value and the ways it affect our lives as school going children as well as youths of Liberia.   In these programs, there were specific remarks and recommendation made by students and the administration. Some of those include: the coverage of OWYP programs to other schools, the importance of the community and state intervention to these unknown materials such as the MDGs etc..   Mr. James Wolubah, vice principal for primary division at the school admonished students to be proactive and vigilant in the process of the UN MDGs at the Isaac A. David School. For the students part, they expressed delight and recognize NAYD-Liberia continue effort in the educational process of Liberian youths.   Special thanks to NAYD International Regional Director for West Africa, Mr. Thomas P. Mitchell, Jr., for his tremendous and brilliant work he continue to pursue for social and sustainable development, human rights, peace message in Liberia. Mr. Mitchell, who recently came from Australia attending an importance conference organized by Oxfam Australia, has planned to host a one day orientation and development workshop for NAYD-Liberia staffs in December 2007.