Kharkiv EuroClub Volunteer Seminar

Last Thursday, one of my fellow English teachers and I attended a seminar about Volunteer movement among youth at School No. 65 in Kharkiv. The seminar was the first of its kind, led by the organization EuroClub. EuroClub is a popular after-school activities club focused on studying European countries and they host different events throughout the year. Many schools participate in EuroClub events and I plan to start a EuroClub at my school in the fall!

Everyone present at the seminar!

There were members of about 10 different volunteer organizations present at this seminar, and teachers from about 15 different EuroClubs located in Kharkiv and Sumy Oblast (Sumy borders Kharkiv to the west). I was excited to meet the president of Kharkiv's AIESEC organization and I was impressed to meet a Ukrainian university student who had lived and worked as a volunteer in India through AIESEC.

The Ukrainian teachers and representatives from different volunteer organizations.

Here is a photo of the representatives from Svit Ukraine - an organization which sponsors volunteers to come to work on projects and camps in Ukraine from different countries.  They currently have 2 volunteers in the Kharkiv area and others scattered around the country, such as in Donetsk.

Two of Svit Ukraine's volunteers: Caroline from France (far left) and Hank from Germany.

I was invited to represent Peace Corps at this seminar by my friend Oksana, one of the Ukrainian English teachers. They asked me to say a few words about Peace Corps in Russian, so thankfully I had brought along a piece of paper with some PC statistics and history from our Language Manuals.

I started out my speech by apologizing for butchering the endings since I only studied Russian for 3 months here.

It was really interesting to see what local volunteer organizations do in Ukraine, and to hear about some of their projects. Luckily this seminar was presented in Russian (and not Ukrainian), so I could understand most of what was going on.

The school director spoke a few minutes to welcome us all to her school and to begin the seminar.

After each of the organizations introduced themselves, we had a mini "press-conference" where some representatives from the different organizations sat on stage and the audience was permitted to ask us questions. The questions that came from the audience were thought-provoking such as how do different countries view volunteering and in what professional spheres are volunteer opportunities available. These questions were interesting to me as well, since I have little knowledge of what volunteerism is like in France, Germany or even in Ukraine - most international people (outside of other Peace Corps volunteers) that I meet in Ukraine are university students or working here, not volunteers.

The "press conference" panel of volunteers.

The seminar also included some time for the students to attend breakout sessions and come up with their own project ideas for volunteers in Kharkiv and in Ukraine. After the breakout sessions, the students came back to the main auditorium and presented their ideas to everyone. This was great because the students were able to recieve feedback from actual volunteer organizations, which gives them more of a chance to take the intitative and actually launch their own projects in the future.

I have a few weeks off from work now, then I'm headed off to Camp HEAL in Sumy Oblast in July! Happy travels and have a great summer everyone :)

Euro-Club: an English Week Karaoke Talent Show

Last Friday, I went to my friend Whitney's school in Kharkiv to attend their karaoke show. Whitney is a TEFL (Teacher of English as a Foreign Language) Peace Corps Volunteer like myself, and she organized this karaoke talent show as the culmination of her school's English week, and it was certainly an impressive show! The school's auditorium was all decorated professionally and the event was called Euro-Club, complete with MCs, a jury panel, and a projector screen of music videos and lyrics.

Whitney with a few of the English teachers from around her district and fellow PCVs - Sally, Ty, Sam and myself.

We kicked off the show by singing the Glee version of Bill Wither's "Lean on Me". Students from the 5th through 11th forms participated in this event, complete with costumes and choreographed backup dancers. They all memorized their songs and sang very well in English, I was really impressed! I tried to sing a song in Russian called "Pozvenee" by Tatyana Bulanova and was horribly embarassed because I didn't realize that I wouldn't be able to see the screen with the lyrics from on stage. Here are a few highlights from the show:

The 7th graders sang a song called "Valentine".

These 5th graders were adorable, they stole everyone's heart while singing a Marilyn Monroe song.

Several of the 8th graders performed Bob Marley's "Don't Worry, Be Happy".

A girl from the 9th form sang Maroon 5's "She Will Be Loved".

A group of girls from the 11th form sang and danced to Shakira's "Waka Waka: Time for Africa"

The MCs sang a song in French!

These 5th graders were super cute while singing Aqua's "Barbie Girl".

Overall, I think that a karaoke talent show was a great idea. I might even try to plan an event like this during my school's English week next year :D Sam and I were the only two PCVs that participated as contestants, the others were judges. The panel of judges each held up pieces of paper to give marks from 1 through 10 to each contestant, like American Idol style. After all 14 groups/contestants went, the jury went out to debate and selected the top 3 winners based on their marks and criteria like vocals, pronunciation, overall performance, etc. All of the participants received a little certificate ("gramota" in Russian/Ukrainian) printed in color on glossy photo paper with their names on it. Ukrainians are crazy about certificates like these and all the students were excited to have them. Prizes were given out for the top 3 participants and each participant also received a box of chocolates!

Sam (my sitemate) gave his own rendition of Celo Green's "Forget You".

We were also featured in the Euro-Club's official blog. I am not quite sure what Euro-Club is, but from what I understand, it is about sharing cultures among European countries and it is quite popular among secondary schools in Kharkiv. I will have to research some more information about it... maybe my school will be interested in participating!