Community Service Day

In my post titled 'Work Hard, Play Hard (Part 1)', I mentioned that we were planning a Community Service day.  I also mentioned that we spent a lot of time planning the day and we'd probably get to less than half of what we had on the agenda.  So what actually happened on Community Service Day?   You guessed it...  'Turkey Time' kicked in and we only got to a small portion of our planned events.  But everyone had a great time so it was a huge success.

(P.S. See Time Warp for a definition of Turkey Time)

 Although you could say that the entire CSC experience is community service, each team is encourage to spend a half day working with a local non-profit organization.  While each CSC team is free to choose their service, it seems that most teams choose to work with local children and our team was no exception.  We all piled into the bus and headed to EÇEV (Ege Çağdaş Eğitim Vakfı).  EÇEV isn't a school per se but more like an enriched after-school environment.  Children attend regular school near by but then also attend some classes at EÇEV including English, Arts, Theater, and more.  Most of the children who attend are on scholarship and ongoing education is provided to their parents as well.

Upon arrival we were greeted by the teachers and administrators and given a tour of the school.  And of course, we had tea.

Photo credit to Serina

 Then the kids were brought into the auditorium and the headmaster gave an introduction about the school and its activities.  And finally we got to start on our agenda for the day.
First, we introduced ourselves by showing a power point slide about our country and made the students guess where we were from.  They were really smart and got most of the countries on the first try.  Even Vietnam, which we thought might be the most difficult, they got on the 3rd guess.  How well would you do?

Next we asked the kids to draw a picture about what they wanted to be when they grew up.  (Pilot, Doctor, Laywer, Teacher, Football/Soccer Player, Fashion Designer, Computer Engineer, and more).  Then they presented their drawings and we asked them what it would take to make their dreams come true.  (Hard work, school, perseverance, self confidence, etc.)

Next up was a team building game.  Students were grouped in circles of 8-10 and were asked to extend their left hand and grab hands with someone across the circle from them.  Then do the same with their right hand.  At this point they have formed an incredible human knot and we ask them to untangle themselves back into a circle.  Since they were all speaking in Turkish I have no idea what they were saying but after a lot of talking and a lot of laughing each of the groups successfully untangled themselves.  Here are some IBMers attempting to demonstrate!

Next up was the amazing Kazafumi-san.  He showed them a trick with a stick (I won't even try to describe it ... it involves twirling a stick around from one position to another) and showed them how to make oragami cranes.

We ended the day by teaching them how to Salsa dance and they taught us some traditional Turkish dance.  Sadly I do not have pictures of that activity!

Overall a long, hot day but the laughter made it all worth while.

(Answer: Australia, Brazil, India, Japan, New Zealand, USA, Vietnam.  Sorry: Mexico is missing from the slide deck.)

#ibmcsc Turkey 8