-Indian Student Presents Project on Social
Injustice-
Carleton College student Anushka Patel hosted a gathering
last Thursday, March 18 at the Hideaway Winebar where she presented
a screening of her video project as part of a CCC program with
ASHA's Better Life Education Program in
India.
Anushka, born in Mumbai, traveled to Pune last December to
work with ASHA girls living in the slums. She spent two days
with the girls where she first discussed the concept of social
injustice. This was a very eye-opening experience for her as
most of the Indian girls were unaware of was social
injustice was, even though they were surrounded by it on a
daily basis.
Afterwards, she conducted an art project where the ASHA girls
were asked to create art that expressed their feelings about an
aspect of social injustice that they felt strongly about.
Asushka filmed the making of the projects, as well as the girls'
explanations, which included issues such as pollution, child
marriages, expensive dowrys that women's families are forced to pay
and how poror poeple are often exploited by the
wealthy.
-Northfield Students Raising Money for War Kids
Relief-
Seventeen year old
Sarah Tiano is leading the charge on an creative
and impactful project that helps Northfield teens learn
more about the plight of their peers in war zones, as well as get
involved to help make a difference for them.
Sarah has designed
handmade “peace bracelets” that she is selling in local shops to
raise money for a new WKR project that will help an Afghan IDP
(internally displaced person) in Kabul be able to start a small,
income generating business in order to help provide for his
family.
To produce the
500 bracelets needed, Sarah is hosting bracelet-making parties
where area youth can come and have fun together while helping
support the cause. At each party, Sarah provides snacks, as well as
an informative presentation on the plight of war kids and how making
a little $5 bracelet can actually make a big difference.
Sarah is also making
presentations to area churches and youth groups in an effort to
garner more support for the cause.
For information on future bracelet-making parties or
presentations contact Sarah at sarah.tiano @ gmail.com.
-Cannon Falls Sixth Graders Learning from Afghan
Teen-
On
February 19, students in the Cannon Falls, Minnesota, 6th grade
social studies classes began week one of WKR’s ten-week pilot
program on Afghanistan.
Session
one presented a cultural overview of Afghanistan where kids
learned interesting cultural facts, watched a video
montage of modern life in Kabul, and had fun participating in a
cross-cultural communication activity that taught them how to avoid
making judgements about other cultural groups.
The
highlight of the session, however, was when the students watched the
first video featuring Karima.
Karima is a 14-year old girl living in Kabul who Dina met
during her trip there in December. Karima expressed her dream of
becoming a TV reporter when she grows up, so Dina hired her to
make video lessons for the pilot project. Each week she will
introduce the American kids to a new and interesting
aspect of Afghan culture.
“Every kids eyes were glued to the screen as they heard
Karima tell her story,” said Dina. “They really related to her
as a peer, a friend…which was our goal. After it was over, they
all commented on how easy their lives are as Americans, how strong
and brave Karima is, and how often they take their education for
granted.”
To
watch Karima’s first video please go
to:
http://www.vimeo.com/8646811
password: maktab
-Indian Girls' Photography Exhibit on
Display-
From January through March 2010, New Perspectives, New
Possibilities, a
powerful photography exhibit created by girls living in an Indian
slum will be on display at the Hideaway Coffeeshop &
Winebar in downtown Northfield.
The
photographs were taken by girls in ASHA's Better Life Education
Program, CCC’s
India charity partner that helps at-risk girls in India’s oppressive
slums break the cycle of poverty, illiteracy and domestic violence
by fostering self esteem and encouraging education.
The exhibit is a result of a CCC program
where last spring 30 Northfield girls exchanged journals with 30
ASHA girls. Rich Koechlein, who led the project, traveled to India.
While there, using donated digital cameras, he also gave the ASHA
girls a photography lesson and sent them out to photograph their
worlds. What they came back with was an
amazing perspective, and an experience they claimed was the
most empowering of their young lives.
-Culture in the
Classroom-
A dozen grade school kids in two Twin Cities classes learned
about China and Guatemala this winter, thanks to Children’s Culture
Connection’s classroom presentations.
Both school groups were at Groves Academy, a St. Louis Park,
Minnesota, school that specializes in educating children with
learning disabilities. In December each of the grade school classes
at Groves was studying a different country; Guatemala and China were
chosen in part because a child in those classrooms was born in those
countries.
A CCC representative raised in China, and another who has
traveled trough Guatemala, showed the kids pictures of the countries
and discussed their history, culture, foods, and children’s games.
Then the students decorated large human body outlines designed to
represent themselves or the person they would like to be, writing
their names and other relevant information on the backs. Those
drawings will later be shared with children in CCC’s China and
Guatemala children’s charities, possibly leading to further cultural
exchanges.
-Peru Charity Founder Visits
Minnesota-
CCC
supporters in Minnesota will have a chance to meet the founder of
our Peruvian charity, Angels of the Amazon, when Dolly Beaver comes
to Cannon Falls on September 6 and 7.
Beaver is coming to Cannon Falls—the
nearest sizable town to Dennison, Minnesota, where CCC’s
headquarters are based—to do a presentation at the Cannon River
Winery there about her organization and to help host a fundraiser
for it.
Angels of the Amazon (AOA) is a nonprofit
group supporting the health and educational needs of children living
in a remote Amazon rainforest area. AOA has already helped dozens of
children receive medical treatments, such as eye surgeries and
cancer treatments, and scholarships, so they might continue in
school.
In conjunction with this charity, Beaver has
organized a local cooperative of women in a hand-crafted basket
business that helps the women support their families. The baskets
will be on sale in nearby Northfield, Minnesota, at the Main
St. Moravian Church (Division St. & 8th St) on Sunday,
September 7 during that community's annual Defeat of Jesse James
Days celebration. Beaver will attend the basket sale to talk with
guests about her work.
-Executive Director Visits
Kurdistan-
Fashion designer (and CCC executive
director) Dina Fesler and makeup artist Sandra Hakim will travel to
an Iraqi refugee camp in Kurdistan this month to work with kids
caught in the crossfire of war.
Fesler and Hakim, accompanied by human
rights photographer Paul Corbit Brown, will work with 40 Iraqi kids
at the Nawroz Children Culture Center in Sulymania on a daylong art
project utilizing the concept of "fashion as a communication
medium," through which the kids will tell their
stories.
Using fabric scraps, paint, and other
craft materials, the children will be asked to create a character on
paper that tells a story. They'll be encouraged to use the concepts
of fashion to communicate different aspects of their character's
personality and life story. The character could be anything from the
child herself to a Super Hero alter-ego. Each kid will be encouraged
to share the story of the character they create, as well as its
relation to that child's life.
Afterwards the artwork will be brought
back to the United States, where it will go on tour through a
nationwide art exhibit sponsored by Rotary International, thus
bringing the voices of these refugee children around the
world.
Revisit this online newsletter in
September for a report and photographs from the
project.
-CCC at Latin American Culture
Camp-
Surrounded by dozens of Colombian,
Guatemalan, Chilean, and Paraguayan kids, CCC board members Dina
Fesler and Lynette Lamb worked a booth at the July 2008 market day
of La Semana, a weeklong culture camp for Latin American adoptees
and other children of Latin American
descent.
La Semana, now in its 27th
year, was held at a large Lutheran church in Lakeville, Minnesota, a
suburb of Minneapolis. Vendors hawked various Latin American items,
such as woven bracelets and purses, burlap carry-alls, and Latino
baby dolls.
The Guatemala T-shirts designed by Fesler
sold particularly well at the CCC booth. Like everything CCC does,
the T-shirts are educational as well as fun: the design includes 10
items about Guatemalan culture and history and the T-shirts come
with tags explaining those
items.
Plans are now in the works to produce
Chinese and Russian T-Shirts, which are expected to be of particular
interest to those large adoptee groups. For more informatino about
La Semana, please go to www.lasemana.org
-CCC Teaches Third Graders About
China-
An Eden
Prairie, Minnesota, classroom of third graders now knows all about
Chinese geography, joss paper, homemade kites, and many other unique
aspects of Chinese culture, thanks to an educational presentation on
China put on in April by CCC executive director Dina Fesler, China
native Echo Huang and CCC Classroom Project Coordinator, Kathy
Braga.
Huang, a board member of CCC-supported charity China AIDS
Orphan Fund (CAOF), is a native of Shenzhen, China. She showed
slides of China as well as photos from her own childhood there, and
talked with
the Prairie View Elementary School kids about hobbies and other
things kids enjoy doing in China.
Dina
and Echo showed the kids Chinese calligraphy, joss paper (sheets of
paper burned in traditional ancestor worship ceremonies during
holidays), incense sticks, and marble chops (carved seals) and
discussed the significance of all of these in Chinese
culture.
Finally, the third-graders listened to CDs of Chinese
children’s music as they wrote messages to send to their Chinese
peers in the CAOF program. Their messages included one thing that
they had learned about China that day, and one thing they wanted
Chinese kids to know about American culture—such as soccer, music,
and Minnesota weather.
-Voyage
to India-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_XGOsZD5rQ

Parveen
is 17 and lives in the Morwadi community, a slum neighborhood in
Pune, India. The only child of a single
mother, she has passed her 11th standard exams, the
equivalent of 11th grade in the U.S., and after a final
year of school will head to Pune’s Garware College in summer 2009 to
study commerce.
Parveen is one of the 26 teenagers in the ASHA Better Life
Education Program who spent a week in April taking tours and doing
art projects with CCC board members Dina Fesler and Lynette Lamb. So
far she is the only one of the group heading to
college.
Because she is intelligent and her English is excellent,
Parveen soon found herself serving as an additional translator for
the week. She was in the awkward position of having to instruct her
peers, but handled the assignment with grace and
tact.
During trips to parks, restaurants, and hill stations,
Parveen helped move the girls into groups, line them up for photos,
and instructed them in art and photo
assignments.
Unlike many of her friends, who will work as domestic
servants or seamstresses, and then marry at 18, Parveen hopes to
eventually earn a doctorate, and not marry until her twenties. The
Morwadi community will pay the 1,000 rupees a year ($25) her tuition
will cost; perhaps she will even come to the U.S. for graduate
school.
In contrast, there is another ASHA girl named Parveen, also
17, who is engaged to be married next year. Meanwhile, she works as
a “stitcher” or seamstress. She is quiet and serious, as if she
knows this girlish time of games and songs and giggling is nearing
an end.
Then there is little Shridevi, 13, a merry sprite of a girl
who is the size of an American 9-year-old. Her face is full of joy
and light and she fairly skips through life. Shridevi is in the
sixth standard at school, has three sisters and one brother, and
loves to swim so much she aspires to be a mermaid. So far her
nautical adventures have been confined to the drainage canal in her
community, but she dreams of the day she can swim amidst the fish
and coral.
What the ASHA and CCC staff dream of is that all these girls
continue in school at least through the
10th
standard. Passing that hurdle is the ticket to a decent
white-collar job in India—as a receptionist, preschool aide, or
hotel desk clerk. Dropping out before that time means many fewer
options. Most girls with less schooling are confined to work as
domestic servants, factory workers, or
seamstresses.
In April, Children’s Culture Connection led a week of tours
to parks, restaurants, and a bus trip to the mountains, along with
leading various art projects. The week was designed to broaden the
girls’ worlds, get them thinking, and further encourage them to stay
in school.
By week’s end, three of the girls who had dropped out after
the 7th standard had decided to return to their
studies. Minal Dani, ASHA’s administrator, was already working on
hiring a tutor for the group by the time Dina and Lynette had left
India.
The hopes and dreams of the ASHA girls were made manifest
through the paintings, photographs, and journal writings they did
over the course of the week. Shridevi’s 14-year-old sister, Anita,
may have summarized their longings best, when she was asked why she
had painted a fish and a butterfly: “I want to cross through the
rivers like a fish; I want to travel the world like a
butterfly.”

|
How you can help ASHA
girls
CCC will
continue to annually fund ASHA’s program
for
girls and will also be starting a general education
fund for
the group, which will pay for tutoring and
miscellaneous school expenses, and ultimately for
college
scholarships, to encourage these girls to stay in
and/or
return to school.
To make a
donation, write a
check to Children’s
Culture
Connection and designate India/ASHA Education
Fund
in
the memo. |
-Haiti
Comes to Edina-
Although only a one-hour flight from the U.S., Haiti remains
an enigma to many Americans. That's no longer true, however, for a
group of six-year olds at Edina, Minnesota's Normandale Elementary
French Immersion School.
CCC executive director Dina Fesler spoke in April to two
kindergarten classes at Normandale School about Haitian culture and the children she
met during her recent visit to Haiti. Dina spent a week in the
Caribbean country in March, learning more about CCC's Haitian
charity L'Athletique d'Haiti.
During her visit to the Edina school, Dina showed the
children photos and homemade toys made by the kids in the
L'Athletique d'Haiti program, as well as a video of them performing
a song. As a special treat, a Haitian woman came to share stories of
growing up in Haiti and to teach them Compa dancing. The Minnesota
kids, in turn, produced their own video of songs to send to the
Haitian kids, and are now busy making French ABC books to send to
children in a Haitian orphanage as well.
-Attend
CCC’s Annual Fundraiser-

On a golden fall afternoon in October, Children's Culture
Connection will hold its annual "Passport to the World" fundraiser
in Cannon Falls, Minnesota.
Enjoy appetizers from around the world, silent auction items
and fashions inspired by our 12 charity countries, Minnesota wines,
and more at the picturesque Cannon River Winery.
The fundraiser will be held on Sunday, October 26 from noon
to 3 p.m. Cannon Falls is located off Highway 52,
just 45 minutes south of Minneapolis/St. Paul.
Official invitations to the fundraiser will be mailed in
September. To ensure your invitation, please sign up for our mailing
list on the "Get Involved!" page of this web site.
-A Week in Haiti-

CCC founder and executive director Dina Fesler
traveled to Haiti in March 2008 for the first time to do a site
visit with CCC charity L/Athletique d'Haiti.
She was greeted at the airport by L’Athletique
D’Haiti founder Robert “Boby” Duvall, a force of nature to rival her
own legendary energy and
enthusiasm.
Dina describes him as “a one-man revolution”
determined to bring hope and opportunity to the Haitian people and
their children through his incredible school and soccer program. In
12 years L’Athletique D’Haiti has grown from one training center to
five and currently serves 1,500 kids around the country. His goal is
to open 25 centers so that every child in Haiti can enjoy the
education, structure, discipline, team-building, and one hot meal
per day that make up his program.

Dina was impressed by the energy, spirit, and good
health of the children in L'Athletique D'Haiti--this despite the
desperately poor conditions in which most of these kids
live.
On one especially fun afternoon Dina and Boby watched
as club kids fashioned toys out of tape, paperclips, and various
garbage items such as plastic bags and cups. CCC will showcase some
of these toys during Minnesota classroom visits, and hopes to
encourage U.S. kids to be equally creative with their own found
supplies.
Plans are also in the works for CCC to coordinate a
sponsorshio betwwen L'Athletique d'Haiti and a Minnesota Rotary Club
as a way to help support additinoal projects in
Haiti.
-Visit to
Vietnam-

A whirlwind week in Vietnam in February 2008 introduced CCC
director Dina Fesler and advisory board member Connie Bickman to the
myriad programs supported by Children of
Vietnam.
Children of Vietnam (COV), a CCC-supported charity, just
celebrated its 10th anniversary. It was started by former
corporate executive Ben Wilson, who feared being bored in
retirement.
Obviously Wilson's fears have not been realized, for in just
a decade his organization has provided orphanages and kindergartens
with new buildings, structural renovations, and food and milk
programs; medical assistance to blind, ill and disabled children;
and permanent houses to families living in tin-roofed
shacks.

COV also funds schools and college-prep tutoring programs,
and gives bicycles to kids who need the transportation to get to
school, among other
initiatives.
As Dina put it, “I can’t begin to describe the impact this
organization is having on the lives of so many children.”
|