Albania 1282 participants to the summer camps with MOVE activities!

Project : MOVE 24 Sep 2009 | begging street activities education protection systems summer camp

Tirana, Albania: 842 children, 190 Parents, 43 teachers, 15 Move animators, 8 Community Based organizations, 4 Pear educators and 2 students: the list of the participants to the summer camps is quite long! During July and August 2009, the summer Camps have been organized in Tirana, Fier, Levan, Balthez, Driza, Korca, Vlora, Durres, Elbasan and Pogradec.

These Summer activities aimed at strengthening the capacities of the Child Protection Units, the municipality staff, Roma Community Centers, the community and partners; following up and identifying children in need of protection, registering them and preventing them from street situation.

The purpose of these activities is to provide the children with a safe, friendly and learning environment during a period when schools close down; and giving children the opportunity to participate in educational, psychosocial, cultural and sport activities as an alternative to streetwork and begging.

Many vulnerable children from families with social-economical problems have been participating to the summer activities. Usually these children are begging or working every day on the street. The participants mostly come from Roma and Balkanic Egyptian communities and their ages vary from 3-17 years and the number of participant is increasing year by year. This year, the participation of mothers with newborn babies has been specially noticed.

15 of the animators of the summer camps got trained as a MOVE animator during the training session this spring. The psychosocial approach on which MOVE is based has therefore been integrated in all summer camps and constituted an important component. The MOVE approach integrated in the summer activities aims at the development of the children’s self-esteem, their self responsibility, but also their capacity of acting in a group, listening to others and cooperate. For example, children are learning how to take decisions in groups through communication, trust and collaboration. (More info on MOVE project here)

For the children participants, it was the first time to be involved in psychosocial activities. The impact of the activities on children was obvious considering their big desire to take part in the games in a very active way and their increasing demand in organizing many more activities like this. What is worthy to be emphasized is that during the feedback after each game, all the children have been very interested in giving their opinion about the game, the way they have felt while playing different roles during the game. Furthermore, they have been giving their suggestions on how the game should be played.

Not only the children, but also the animators are happy about the MOVE activities integrated into the summer activities. MOVE has given theme important tools and from their feedback we can state, that the MOVE tool clearly improves the quality of the activities offered to the children. Animators especially pointed out the important degree of active participation of the children to the games.

After more than a month of summer activities, we can draw a very positive balance regarding the integration of MOVE into Tdh’s summer activities in Albania and point out the gain of quality MOVE brought into all the activities offered to the children Tdh is working with.

See the image gallery of the summer camps here