Monday 11 November 2013

Autumn Holiday in JACis

28th October to 1st of November.... magic date that all of JACis has been preparing for throughout the whole month. Why? Quite simply the busiest time of the month, the holiday time. Schools are closed and where do many children go? to JACis of course.

Planning already began 2 weeks in advance, but no matter how well you plan, you can never get ready for this amount of children entering our little house. Yet the plan was clear: The main activity of the week was the pool  tournament, taking place throughout the whole week. I took up the challenge to organize it, with our local boys Edgars & Sandis helping me out. We actually made 2 separate tournaments- one for kids under 13 years of age, the other was open for anyone older. A total of 15 people participated. Preparing the poster, rules, diploma templates, planning the whole organization, all this was done before the holidays began. Now it was all about the game. On Thursday, we found the winner in the small group. Friday then gave us the winner in the big group. The tournament as such was a success, but we were lucky to plan it throughout the whole week as there were problems with some participants not showing up in JACis for a few days, therefore delaying the whole tournament.







Aside from the pool tournament, the holiday week was rich with crafts activities planned by Pilar. Be it crafting handmade notepads or cooking a yoghurt cake & making toppers to decorate it, all the activities were well appreciated by those who joined (especially cake baking =.P). In the end of the week Pilar together with children prepared a tree poster for our Sunday special event.



Read more! There are more pictures and interesting activities!!!





Wednesday was a particularly busy day in JACis. First we greeted two police officers who prepared an interactive workshop for children about safe movement outside during the dark parts of the year. This workshop met with great interest as almost  20 children attended.








Later in the afternoon two ladies from Rezekne library showed up to tell us some interesting facts about the history of Rezekne. This was followed by an introduction of a book about history of Rezekne and watching a short movie on similar topic.


Thursday the 31st of October and All Hallows Eve- that only meant one thing... but let the picture tell you what was going on =.)


On Friday we also celebrated birthday of one of our local volunteers, Alexandr. Everything was in place, birthday cake, sweets and of course tea.




Aside from al the happenings in JACis, one of our main tasks was to prepare for the next week presentation/workshop in one of local highs schools. The aim of our presentation being to introduce ourselves, our countries and our work in JACis to local youth and hopefully encourage them to join us in JACis sooner or later. Together with that, we have been working on a custom "JACis EVS" calendar 2014 to present to the class we shall visit. We have been working on all this throughout the whole week, whenever we got some spare time. 

The whole week of activities was very special but the true cherry on top was our Sunday involvement in Sundays charity concert during which JACis has taken care of entertaining children with various forms of disabilities, while their parents attended the concert. It was a very unique event and for me personally, the first time I have ever got the chance to interact with these children on such scale. It is unbelievable how much energy these children possess and how rewarding it feels when you make them smile =.) Another great week in JACis!




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