By Shoghik Mikayelyan | Executive Director
“One day our geography teacher entered the classroom and told us to write a paper on natural catastrophes. She told us to write it and didn’t even explain how we were supposed to write the paper. We could hear our classmates complaining, not knowing how to write the assignment, not knowing how to search for the right information or what to do with it. We felt a little bit privileged, because we knew not only how to navigate the internet, find the right information and how to write a paper, but we had also written a paper twice in Nor Luyce. And we offered to help our classmates,” two of our mentees were telling us excitedly. “We shared with our classmates all the criteria for writing a research assignment and also showed them our previous papers”.
During these three months we realized 11 group meetings (a total of 22 hours), 7 of which were computer classes and the rest were computer-related meetings. The participants gained more skills in MS Word, PPT, internet navigation, etc. and 6 mentees made and presented PPTs to other mentees of the organization on different topics such as: The Psychological effects of colors; Flags of the world; Italy; Fashion as a part of young girls’ life; Lightening, etc.
One of the mentees helped the Group Meeting Coordinator to organize a group meeting for other mentees and she put together a PPT on Armenian Genocide, which she presented to the participants.
3 mentor-mentee pairs spent about 10 hours working on computers and searching, not only the information they needed, but also creating a PPT on a topic of their choice. They prepared presentations on Healthy food; the influence of the Chocolate; Guinness World Records. This pair work helped mentors and mentees spend more time together, gain new knowledge, experience team work and, of course, have fun.
7 more mentees used their recently gained knowledge and prepared a assignments for their schools and colleges on different topics, such as: First Aid, Earthquakes, Landslides, Healthy mind in a Healthy body, Discrimination, etc.
To celebrate Women’s International Day, Nor Luyce mentees made portraits of women who were inspiring them. To make the portraits they started to collect information about their heroes. So 28 mentees researched information about different famous women, extracted the important information from their research, edited the information, collected everything on a word document, designed and printed out this information, thus using all the computer and internet skills learnt during the computer classes.
“You know, I am taking photography classes at TUMO center. One day our teacher told us to make a PPT about a problem in Gyumri, my city, and in our entire group I was the only one who knew how to make a PPT. They were happily surprised to find out about my skills and they offered for me to take pictures and make a PPT on a problem Gyumri faces. The topic was “Domiks (containers, where people live) of Gyumri”. I took the pictures, put together my PPT and gave a presentation to not only our group members but also to other members of TUMO center” one of our mentees, Flora Mkrtchyan, said with sparkling eyes.
Along with computer classes all the mentees have taken part in 22-hours of group meetings, such as goal setting, career planning, values and interests, stress management, conflict resolution, etc. These meetings provide them with an opportunity to become more informed and intelligent, self-motivated and goal-oriented young women.
Our organization provides not only computer classes and other interesting meetings, but it also provides the mentees and mentors with an opportunity to come and use the Computer resource center and do their own job-related or school-related work on the computers. During these three months, mentors and mentees have used the computer resource center for 70 hours.
And of course, all these computer classes couldn’t have been useful if it weren’t for the mentors who are always with the mentees, motivating them to make the right use of all the resources they have access to and to share their knowledge with community members. No matter where you are, what you do, you always need a role model and a mentor to listen and support you.
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