By Kami Ivanova | Project Manager
Dear reader,
Our School Projects are ever more dynamic and we continue to use our donated funds with great care to enhance our facilities as well as focus on the academic achievements and personal development of our pupils. For this we thank you deeply as we continue to see our children grow and learn skills that help them integrate into the local community.
December: Christmas celebrations
As always, the Christmas holidays have been such a blessed experience for our children, gathering together in our new canteen as one big family. Everyone took part with a group or personal performance in our end of year Christmas concert with either a poem, a song or a theatre act that the children prepared with their tutors and mentors for several weeks. It all turned out wonderful as we shared the Christmas Eve dinner together and looked back to remember and reflect on what went right, and mistakes we made and taking some time to discuss how to go forward by focusing on the positive and good in each other!
January: End of first semester
This is a month of new beginnings. Traditionally in January our management team sits together to plan ahead step by step, look at budget, primary needs and priorities and to devise the new year's strategic development plan.
This is also the time when we sit down to look at academic success and address the weaknesses and need for support of our pupils individually one by one and although this process takes time to conclude, we deem it very important and conduct it with great care for as long as need be.
We are happy to report that thus far our pupils are doing exceptionally well in the Arts and Crafts, and the focus of the school as therefore maintained. However, we do have a lot of work on the subjects of Math and the languages. We have managed to hire a new English language tutor, and a new primary school teacher who have showed strong commitment and the results are already evident. We also increased the number of hours pupils can get as additional support outside of the curriculum to address their individual needs in those weaker subjects.
February: New kitchen and big conversations on a building a new dormitory
Thankfully, the school has managed to raise sufficient funds to build a new small kitchen in the existing dormitory which was one of our many priorities in the last year. This is because the old kitchen was built 10 years ago and it was very small which made it very hard to accommodate the need to cook on the weekends and in the evenings for our children. While our canteen is very big and equipped with modern technology to cook for all staff and pupils during the week mornings and lunch hours, it is located in a separate building and this means walking outside of the dormitory in the cold winter and rainy days. That alone used to create challenges for the team to organise the dinners and more staff were needed to facilitate them. Now with the new kitchen life is much easier and the dormitory feels a lot more like home with sufficient space to cook dinner and the kids to enjoy helping in the kitchen as members of our big family.
New Dormitory Project
Separately, we have a very BIG PROJECT, that we have shared with you over the past few reports, looking at expanding our facilities and building a second dormitory in order to accommodate and admit between 45-60 new pupils step by step over the next 2 years as part of our strategic development plans.
We have been so blessed to receive support from our partners in the US who are looking to support us financially to make this dream come true and for this we thank them deeply! Only a year ago such conversations on expansion were but a mere hope and prayer while now we are actually seeing funds coming in, partners visiting personally to conduct formal meetings and making prompt decisions on building our second dormitory - it is all becoming very real and we hope that very soon we will be able to announce that construction is on the way.
Admittedly, we are facing some bureaucratic challenges in the face of our local authorities but we have the patience and will pursue obtaining all building permits in timely fashion to enable the commencement of this project as soon as practically possible.
February - March:
Korean group visiting
Once again we were blessed with a lovely group of Korean friends visitng our school and spending really good quality time with our pupils playing educational games and doing art sessions together. Sometimes such valuable time spent with the kids can go a really long way in their social skils. What seems like a language barrier turns out to be a really good opportunity to try harder to reach out and understand a foreign culture, especially when it is done gratuitously from the heart. Big shout out to Korean friends out there and to everyone else who has taken their time to come and spend time with our children giving them example and participating in their colourful routines.
New school fence
Last, but not least in this report we want to share about our new school fence which has been partially completed and awaiting finalising now that the weather is getting better and rain has subsided in our local area!
We hope you find this report rich in great news that can make your day and you can see how your wonderful help has put in very good use in the recent months!
Thank you!
Sincerely yours,
Association Rusalya Management team
By Kami Ivanova | Project Manager
By Kami Ivanova | Project Manager
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
