"Wanna sing about it?" Ecik's Youth Leadership Camp

I spent the last week helping the Local Community Foundation to organize their first youth summer camp. It was focused on youth leadership and project design. 17 young people from all over the Almaty Oblast came to the camp, and my director and I showed them how to write a project proposal plan, a budget, and identify community resources. In short, it was kind of like the Project Design Management seminar I helped organize in Taldykorgan for Peace Corps, but for youth. And way more fun.

Why do good kids go bad? This poster has the answer. Too bad its a jumble...half upside down, half in Russian and Kazakh.

"Parts of a project" in Kazakh.

Although learning how to design a community project doesn't sound like a sexy theme for a youth summer camp, it wasn't all we did. We also had a couple of sessions on leadership and played a lot of team building and leadership games. The LCF partnered with an ecology camp in Ecik, and they organized several day trips for us to see many of the cool things around Issyk like the Golden Man, Lake Issyk, and the waterfalls behind Turgen, a small town about 15km from Issyk. Through them, I learned so much more about the history of Ecik and the Golden Man.

Lake Issyk. Located about 15 km from my house, it is a lake hemmed in by mountains, and also provides some water for the town. According to my director,about 50 years ago (I forget the exact date) the dam that held in the water broke, and all of the water rushed downhill, taking out the town below and killing a lot of people.

Opening the door to the "rock yurt". Yurts are traditional Kazakh homes, as back in the day Kazakhs were nomadic. Yurts are usually made of cloth, and are warm in the winter and cool in the summer. This yurt is special, because it's made of stone.

But what really made the camp enjoyable were the kids themselves. They were fantastic, motivated, and always interested. And they were very musical. Out of the 17 youth, 6 could play the guitar and dombra, 4 were enrolled in music schools, and all the rest had some musical ability.

Talent. She has it.

And they sang. And danced. And played dombras, drummed on tables and rocked out on the 3 guitars they brought. On their breaks they would have impromptu jam sessions. They would invent songs on the fly about anything: the weather, the food, how they were feeling. It was kind of like watching a 5 day Glee marathon. Although I had to physically cut them off so that we could continue our work, I enjoyed every minute of it.

We spent hours having conversations about the history of jazz music, and the stories behind some of the most popular Kazakh songs. It also made me realize how much I miss playing my saxophone. Since coming to Kazakhstan, I haven't been very musical, and I miss it very much. When I get back to America, finding a sax is going to be a high priority.

It was by far the most fun I've had at a camp, ever.

Hanging out

After the camp, I was exhausted. My director and I worked 8 days in a row setting everything up and doing the camp. And while I want to curl up on my couch and watch episodes of Dexter (my now second favorite TV show), I can't take a break quite yet. I have 15 days to close 2 grants, organize a session on fund raising for other local NGOs, and another summer camp session.