On friday 24th of april... the first training for girls has been organized by four students from the university of education Freiburg. There, behind the houses on a meadow, they did exercices and finished with a game. About 14 girls - 7 to 14 years old - participated.
Still we don't know how much of them are out of Roma families. But especially the younger brothers want to play too: Only this day there was - at the same time - a trainer caring for those boys, playing other games with them. In order to continue a regular training, they now look for a better place to play. One really needs a playground where there is enough calm for training.
For both groups - training with boys and girls - there are still new trainers welcome!
::: Two critical points of organisation :::
ReplyDeleteI accompanied the first two training units of the new team in Freiburg.
There are two aspects which I want to describe from my personal point of view.
- Passing messages among each other:
The boys’ and girls’ families live close one to another on a closed area. At the beginning, I supposed that a message, an appointment for example, should be transmitted from door to door… in less than three hours. But actually, certain routines of visiting cousins & certain arguments between whole families make this idea unreal. In the beginning, one has to tell the message to the social workers, to each single youth and to each of their parents.
- An appointment:
“We will meet next Friday at 6 p.m.” is a sentence that we are used to say and hear. Anyway, not all the kids get the note, remember it or watch the time when it’s friday afternoon. So some will miss the training. I believe that especially the younger ones are still not used to appointments.
Teaching them to meet an appointment does not mean to expect it, but
(1) to show that they are important and that we want each of them to participate,
(2) to explain that they will have to inform their friends, at least before the trainings starts,
(3) to make them watch the time during the training and meet appointments about a break or the trainings end.
(4) to alter tasks of responsibilty: e.g. one girl will care for gathering
as many players as possible on Friday… quarter to six.