-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-

 

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 11^th standard exams, the equivalent of 11^th 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 10^th 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 7^th 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 6-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-