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June 10-14, 2013
Voluntary work at summer camp "C ir kā?!"

Summer camp "C ir kā?!" is a camp for children from age 7 to age 12 that takes place in Lediņi, Jelgava, Latvia. The camp gives children an opportunity to learn and experience new things, find new friends and engage in different educational activities. Nine years ago I used to spend my days there as well. Now it was nice to see what has changed and what has remained the same. I had lots of fun being a volunteer and helping in the organisation and realisation process. 

Children were divided in five teams - Yellow, Orange, Green, Purple and Red - using age as the main criteria of distribution. Every morning they were given wristbands in the colour of their group. From 10.a.m. to 13.a.m. the children went to classes where they were taught by qualified teachers and given a chance to try out something new or improve existing skills. After lunch they had different interesting activities. The theme of this week was Spriditis, a popular Latvian play written by A.Brigadere more than a century ago. Therefore every afternoon activity was somehow connected with this play.

In the morning of day 1 everyone took a part in the making of the camp flag. I helped younger children cut out pieces of cloth in form of their hands and later we glued them to our unique flag. Since teacher Dace was not informed about the plan of the day and was not ready for her lessons, I came up with an idea of a memory game that encouraged children to memorize each others name. It was a fun and useful way of spending time. In the afternoon, while children were watching a movie about Spriditis and getting familiar with all of the characters, we - the volunteers - got ready for the big adventure of the day: photo orienteering. We hid the envelopes, which we had made beforehand, in different places: under benches, between stacking of firewood, on top of the slide, etc. Later each of us went orienteering together with one team - I became the supervisor of the Green team. Together we ran from place to place; in each of them children had to complete different tasks in order to collect pieces of the script of Spriditis. The children put them together like a puzzle and after my suggestion they read the text out loud as smoothly and expressively as each of them could.

In the evening we there was a flag raising ceremony; journalists from the local newspaper came to interview the camp manager, the volunteers and children and take photos. Here is an excerpt of the article (originally written in Latvian):

"[..]Also there are some young people who are voluntarily helping teachers. Zane Mitrevica is one of them. She says: "My school - Riga State Gymnasium No.1 - requires that we do some work that benefits others and society as a whole. That's one of the reasons why I decided to come here and spend time with children. I have got to admit - it is quite fun and I like it. Of course, there are obedient children as well as unruly ones, but we are all very friendly".[..]"

And it is almost exactly what I actually said.

Day 2 was promised to be a quiet, peaceful one in comparison to the first day. For me it was the other way around, though. After helping teacher Inga in her lessons by working with hot glue (children were embellishing pencils with paper roses, feathers and pearls) - I had a very busy and emotionally challenging afternoon. Originally it was planned that all of the teams simply make decorations for the upcoming play, but since it was raining we had to do it indoors. The Green team and I were in another building and - when other teachers and volunteers worked in pairs - I had to manage the group alone. There were fourteen children and it does not seem a lot unless they are very demanding and I have to pay attention to them individually whilst keeping others busy, which I did. The boys wanted to run around and play with paper planes, and they never got tired of poking each other. Two of them kept provoking each other and came complaining heartily about it. Some girls were drawing and quietly laughing, but one very active and insistent young lady was convinced that they were making fun of her. It was not easy to calm her down and get her to make peace with others. In the end we somehow managed to draw a large painting with trees, flowers and an owl sitting in the tree hollow and make a cardboard-cutout of a mug. I established a friendly relationship with these kids and they did not want to let me go. Literally, as I became their favourite hugging object. Not that I am complaining, but this affection was also something completely new to me.

Day 3 ran by in the blink of an eye. First - together with teacher Dace we taught children how to make wonderful paintings with colourful bubbles. Our hands were covered in paint, but children were so thrilled that they ignored the splotches on their clothes. Later my duty was to maintain order by the trampolines and those were hours of intensive work. There was always a queue and I used stopwatch for everything to be fair. Children loved to count down the last ten seconds and then fill the air with happy shouts and phrases such as "Happy New Year!" that made me laugh out loud. Afterwards we planned a competition and each of us thought of a different game or task. I asked the children to throw tennis balls in tires and counted how many times each of the teams succeeded. The Red team got the highest score in total so they got be the first to choose five costumes for the play. My team - the Green team - were in the second place and out of all garments the children chose an enormous brown hat, a smaller red hat, a fur scarf, a green shirt and a white cape. At the time I had no idea how we would use all these clothes, but it did not matter as long as the children were satisfied.

The morning of day 4 was an easy one for volunteers. The teachers did not need much help in classes, so I only tidied up the rooms after every lesson. Most of the children knew my name and I was actually surprised that quite a few of them were eager to talk to me between classes or in their free time. Some of the kids brought me candies, and Eva from the Yellow team gave me the mug she had embellished with painted flowers. After lunch I was by the trampolines again and I had to deal with a kid that stubbornly refused to let others jump and persistently tried to outsmart me. I informed him that the camp manager could easily contact his parents, but he snorted that the manager did not know the phone numbers. I told him about a copy of  the camp contract that each of the party had, he did not believe me at first and we argued about it for a while. Since I had never had to deal with a naughty child before, this was a real challenge and I was not sure whether I was doing the right thing trying to convince the boy and not simply ignoring his bragging. Later he came up to me and showed me his drawing of the Solar System - he was not affronted, but I had gained his respect. However the evening was even tougher - we had to rehearse our five minute play for the first time. I had rewritten the script using more rudimentary phrases and given at least a small part for each of the kids. With the desirable outcome in the back of my mind, I got together with the Green team and checked how well they had learnt their parts and if they knew when they had to talk. Teaching them where they had to stand and when they had to move proved to be the hardest part - it was impossible to keep their attention! While I was talking to one kid, at least four others had started hitting, poking or chasing each other. When I could not take it any longer I yelled at them, they were taken aback, maybe a bit scared, but at least quiet for two minutes and then the running started all over again. In the end I was absolutely exhausted and I had no strength to take the scene from the start. Maybe I was not patient enough, but as I was surprised find out later - the children did not think I had been too harsh with them.

The morning of day 5 was very intense. Hastily we made the costumes: I braided girls' hair, taught the kids how to make a wreath and painted their faces to make them look more like trees and sparks. We rehearsed our play and - what a surprise! - very few kids had memorized it the way I had planned. Some did not remember their lines, some could not say them loudly enough, so I had to make changes. At 3 p.m. the camp was filled with parents and I was probably more nervous than any of the kids. Only now I saw the other four groups perform and their plays were all quite similar - a teacher read the remarks, only the dialogue was acted out and most children simply held the decorations. The Green team's play was very different - I had given at least one line to every kid. In my opinion, that made our play more interesting, although some bits were too rushed or spoken too quietly. After our show we ate cake, watched a slideshow of all the pictures that were taken during the week and laughed in spite of our exhaustion.

Here are some pictures:

day one: getting ready for the flag raising ceremony

day one: leading seventy very excited children to see the finished flag for the first time

day one: happy volunteers (from left: Katrina - me - Katya)

day four: me returning from my watch

day four: together with Vēsma - one of the organizers

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My reflections

When I applied to this project as a volunteer, I thought the experience would be less challenging emotionally. I had to be vigilant, pay attention to every demanding kid and had to always be ready to solve problems that seemed causeless and even silly at times. 

My main goal was to walk in a grown-up's shoes for a few days and to find out how good I was at working with children. Just as I had anticipated - finding a balance between being friendly and rigorous was not an easy task. I still cannot define the right attitude in order to establish respectful, amicable relationship. I tried being kind, but restrained. In result some children became attached to me, some treated me like a grown up, but not a friend and some did not take my objections to mind at all. Therefore I came to a conclusion that it depends on every child individually. I observed that most of the children are more calm and obedient when they are alone rather than surrounded by others. Also I noted that there is a cosiderable difference between a chilld of age 7 and age 12 that I have to keep in mind when communicating. 

Some of the difficulties I had to encounter was caused by my disability to speak Russian freely. There were children who did not speak Latvian very well, but I had to understand their needs and help them solve problems nonetheless. Even if I had to ask others for help sometimes, I think this experience improved my Russian.

An important issue in my mind was the attitude of some of the teachers that the organizers did not pay much attention to. There were teachers who gave the 10-year-olds coloring books, because they did not want to do anything themselves. I do not understand how they could be so irresponsible! If it was my job to keep children entertained for an hour, I would think of some educational activities or teach them something  useful. I was also disappointed that the organizers did not make the teachers report what they had planned to do in their classes.

During this activity I put forth my best effort, always did what I was asked to and offered my help whenever I could. My participation in this project clearly resulted in identifiable benefit to others since without my help they would have had to do a lot more. Interacting with children this much was something absolutely new for me and I am glad I took part in this project.