Where is Moldova, anyway?

Well Independence Day, actually.

For such an old country--- my village, for instance, can trace its existence (by notation in historical documents... who knows how long it existed before it was documented!) back to the year 1420-- Moldova really hasn't spent much time under its own authority. Whether it was Germany, Romania, the USSR, the Mongols, the Huns or the Turks.... this is a land that has been influenced by many, offended by many, seized by many, divided by many, traversed by many... and still holds on to a very strong "traditional Moldovan" way of life. (I put that in quotes because what Moldovans today consider "Moldovan Traditions" have clearly been influenced by the surrounding cultures. While they may not be "pure" they are definitely a unique Moldovan blend). Today, we are celebrating the 16th anniversary of Moldova's independence from the USSR in 1991. Happy Sweet 16, Moldova.

Coincidentally, today is also the one year anniversary of my first blog post. Ura!!! (hooray in Romanian! That one's not too hard to figure out... ) And coming up soon will be the one year anniversary in Moldova... scary (read: VERY scary!) how time flies. But I'm not going to talk about that right now... at least not just yet... I will spend the next two weeks refusing to acknowledge how close our one year anniversary in Moldova is (September 12th) until it is upon us!

So today I am in the capital celebrating, and then will return to my village tonight to catch some of the dancing up there! While I had the interent access I decided to update my blog, seeing as I have almost gone yet another month without writing anything. I will catch you up briefly, and try to be better about it in the future.

Besides the summer camp (G.L.O.W.) and my wonderful vacation to the amazingly beautiful and delicious land of Greece, I have been working locally in my village to develop a new NGO for youth. (This is different than the center for children with disabilities that I have been working at... and is much more grassroots. So far we have an operating budget of 0 dollars! It is also something I am very excited about...and something that ties in a lot of the experience I have from America.

My partner for this project is a young girl (22) who is from Singerei also, so she knows a lot about the community, peoples attitudes, etc. She is also very excited and committed to this project. The goals of the NGO are: To promote youth to be active in their community; to provide them the resources they need to meet the challenges they face locally (and the community faces) -- resources as in lessons, demonstrations, guidance etc, and to serve as a platform for all youth activities in Singerei.

So our focus is basically on non-formal education, and through this education-- community participation. (ie instead of me, as the Peace Corps volunteer, running around our town seeing what "problems" exist and how I can try to fix them.... the kids will be! This is their home, not mine, after all).

This summer we kicked off the NGO. Our main cornerstone project was a 10 week leadership course for around 40 students. We met every Sunday and spoke about things like "what is a leader" and "what is the difference between a group and a team," "what is feedback," "what is community action," etc etc. We did team building games. Public speaking. Presenting. Every week the kids had "homework". Starting with things as small as interviewing a leader in the community, and ending with things such as writing a project proposal dealing with a problem in our community.

The kids are great... and very enthusiastic. In the next month or so we are going to try and implement two of the projects the kids came up with. I'm very excited about that-- because they are more involved and more willing to help out and see a project through if it came from them, and not from me, their teacher or the mayor.

The leadership course isn't the entire NGO, just the soul. We also have an "outing club" and sports days which I have mentioned before (the outing club just ended the summer with a 3 day camp that I planned and implemented by myself! very exciting for me... and while there were road bumps, it was very fun and 25 kids came-- learned and enjoyed time in Nature! Pictures to come soon). English lessons and English discussion (for the few who speak a little better), and we are trying to make a newspaper. Basically we are all over the place... but our kids were busy this summer. VERY busy. And were working hard... very hard. Moldovan kids, in general, do not have things to do in the summer... except housework and tv. So I'm glad about that.

What does the future hold for this NGO? Who knows. We definitely need to work hard during the month of September to see what our role will be when all our kids return to school. But for the meantime, I am very satisfied with the progress we are making.. and have very high hopes for this project!