Pen Pal Picture Exchange
One of the Association's projects has been to start a pen-pal relationship between the grade school in Baracoa and a school in St. Augustine. Our hope is that the pen-pals come to see each other as "real" people. To that end, someone came up with the idea of creating pen-pal albums.
In the first phase, the students in St. Augustine (7th graders) purchased disposable cameras and sent them along with letters to the 7th grade students in Baracoa. The Cuban students were asked to take pictures of themeselves, their families and their neighbors. The cameras were then collected and returned with letters to their pen pals back in St. Augustine. The film will be developed and a returned to the students in Baracoa as albums - complete with pictures of thier new North American friends - as a kind of extended family album. The differences in lifestyle between a 7th grader in Baracoa and a 7th grader across the Florida straight in St. Augustine are in some sense unimaginable. This pen-pal and picture exchange is designed to help examine those differences and foster a sense of mutual understanding.
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Maria was responsible for going into the classrooms and presenting the project to the students. It worked out well, despite Maria's natural dislike for children. We were received very warmly by the headmaster and the students at this school. In all, we went into 4 classrooms and distributed 119 cameras to the students. The kids were respectful, funny and genuinely enthusiastic about the project. (When we entered each classroom, all of the children would stand at attention. A designated student would come to the front of the room and lead the class in a short message of welcome, reciting sections of the Young Pioneer's Code - a practice Maria liked and immediately decided to implement at Parkside.) One problem arose when it turned out that not all of the 7th graders received cameras. The Association is trying to raise money so that the remaining 51 Baracoan students can receive cameras from the next delegation, later this spring. Please consider donating money or disposable cameras to the Association. You can go to their website, or use this button for paypal donation:
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This is the view right about 50 feet from the front door of the grade school. |
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