The grand finale!

The 4th 1000 Crane Camp ended last Friday. All children are back at home and we are back in the office. As all the other camps before, also this one was special.

We started the last day of the camp with a self- reflection and feedback round, where we asked the children to draw their daily highlights. We saw that every activity was the favorite of one or the other child. Of course the children have different interests but we realized that we had satisfied each of them.

 The feedback was followed by a collective artwork. We divided them into 2 groups, prepared 2 canvases with an underwater scene for the children and asked them to design them using colors, fabrics, buttons and waste material.

In the second half of the day the children had to prepare their exhibition for the same afternoon. The excitement and happiness was great! One group of the kids prepared a small program with songs and dances. The other group prepared the room for the exhibition and made sure that all artworks are shown in the right way. At 4 o´clock the first people came in to see the art of our children.
The exhibition is a very important part of the camp, especially to see what the children finally learned. Most of the children come to the camp with a lack of confidence. So it´s always amazing to see this kids, who were 7 days before too shy to speak in front of the group of children, now speaking, singing and dancing in front of a group of adults. All together the exhibition was a total success! The children showed all the visitors around and explained each and every little piece of art- and the visitors were obviously impressed by so much passion and talent.

 

After this long and very exhausting day we all just fell into bed, because the next morning we planned to see the sunrise at the beach- which meant: waking up at 5 in the morning! So the next morning started early at 5 a.m., but all the difficulties to wake up were worth seeing the sunrise, the beach and the children enjoying to play in the water.
After we came back, the saddest part of each camp started: saying goodbye.
The children from Chennai and Goa became very good friends, so it was hard for them to let go each other. They exchanged their phone numbers, addresses, self made cards and small gifts- and it made us very proud to see this honest love for each other.

In the end we would like to quote some of the children´s feedback to the camp:

“When I came to Chennai I was very shy, but now I feel more confident.” (Vasanth)

“I didn´t like to speak English before, but with my new friends it was easy to learn more English” (Magdalene)

“I´m very happy that we did so many different artworks, I feel more free in expressing myself now.”
(Ganesh)