Day 1 - Welcome to the camp WE CARE!

Today was our first day of the international Values Education camp WE CARE! at Dvarčėnų dvaras in Lithuania. This camp brings together delegations of students from Lithuania, Greece, Poland, and the United States to share our culture and grow closer together as countries and individuals. 

Hello from the Polish team: Karina Kozieł, Zuzia Nóżka, Weronika Mazuryk, Maciek Kuśmierz, Łukasz Skwarczyński and Kuba Żołdak together with their tutors Beata Adasik and Marcin Paśnikowski. We are from Szkoła Podstawowa nr 5 im. Janusza Kusocińskiego w Świdniku in the east of Poland. The school does its best to provide for the students with special needs, students gifted at English, Spanish, Maths and Sciences, as well as sports athletes. A number of teachers and students are involved in organising numerous charity events. We hope to have a great time, making friends, learning about democracy, tolerance, ecology, cultural heritage and improving our language skills. Working together we can make the world a better place.

Greetings to all participants of the Values Education Camp “We Care!“ 2019 in Dvarčėnai Lithuania! Anastasija, Marija, Nikol, Jekaterina, Gediminas, Edgar and teacher Rasa from Turgeliai Aistuvos Gymnasium are happy to meet all tutors and new friends at the camp. Our Gymnasium is located in the Jezavitiškės Village, Šalčininkai reg., 30 km from Vilnius. It is a small and cozy school of 184 students and 26 teachers. We are very happy to be here, improve our English, learn about values,  have fun and get ready to spread the accumulated experience in our community.

 

Hello from Kaunas Jonas Jablonskis High School! We are a group of six students who are eager to get to know our peers at the camp! We are Ugnė, Teodoras, Jokūbas, Linas, Dominykas and Marius (travelling with our teacher Saulius). We're excited to be part of this project and really look forward to working and having fun together with the whole team!

Hello - We are Emma, Isabella, Connor, Alex, Jaden, and Lena, and teachers Jamie Evans and Tom Cramer.  Our school, Charles Wright Academy, is located in Washington State, USA, at the south end of the beautiful Puget Sound.  Our school has over 300 students from many different cultural backgrounds. Our school values are integrity, respect, compassion, perseverance, and excellence.  We are excited to be here, to learn new things, and to make new friends.

 

We are Snežana, Saulė, Roberta, Vilius, Laura and Aleksandras from Grigiškės  Šviesos Gymnasium, Vilnius region. We are at the camp with our English teacher Gitana. We are interested in sports, nature, art, swimming, making new friends, dancing, singing, playing various instruments. At the camp we expect to make new friends, practise English while socializing with the campers from other countries, and learn more about the world, values and our environment. We are looking forward to meeting everyone and spending time together!

Hello! We are from Vilnius Santara gymnasium: Ksenija, Darja, Nikita, Elias, Nikita, Daniel and a tutor Alla. Our school is situated in the heart of Vilnius. It is big - 1100 students of different cultural backgrounds study here. We are happy to meet peers from Lithuania, Poland, Greece and the US. By participating in various activities, we hope to learn to accept diversity, avoid stereotypes and biased attitudes towards people and events. And everything will be done in, which will help us to master our speaking skills. Plenty of fun and laughter is guaranteed!!! Our team is ready for it!

 

Hello, everyone! We are a group of students from the 4th and 8th co-located Junior High Schools in Kozani,  which is a small beautiful town in north-western Greece. Our team consists of four girls Eri, Sotiria, Maria and Eleftheria and two boys Nikolas and Haralambos together with our teachers Evangelia Triantafyllou and Sophia Sismanidou. We love doing several projects at school and learn through experience, action and interaction. We are really excited to take part in the Values Education Camp's activities that will help us extend our knowledge about the importance of democracy and ethics and improve our English skills. More importantly, we are thrilled to meet you all and learn about your countries and cultures!

Hello everyone! We are a team from Kuršėnai Stasys Anglickis School -  Adrija, Austė, Livija, Mantas, Simonas, Martynas and our teacher Inga. Our school is named after the famous Lithuanian poet Stasys Anglickis. The main goal of the school is to consider the needs of every student and to make sure that every learner could experience the learning success. We hope to have a great time at the Values Education Camp and we think that clear understanding of values will help us to make the right decisions in life. We look forward to meeting new friends, learning about important social issues and improving our English skills!

 

On our first day the camp members engaged in a series of activities that were designed to allow the students and the tutors to come together as a community. Hilarity ensued when every member of the group had their portrait drawn on an envelope at high-speed by a rotating group. The portraits may not have been of the highest artistic quality in the end, but the goal of humanizing each other through art was both effective and fun!

We then followed up this a series of activities to allow each other to begin to learn everyone’s names. Students played a number of games that required them to master their fellow campers’ names and utilize them in everything from rapid-fire quizzes to a name-based paper snowball fight!

Our activities became a bit more serious when the students were asked to create the rules that would govern our new community. Everyone was expected to contribute to the creation of all aspects of camp life and to discuss, debate, and ultimately confirm the set of rules and expectations this next week. Along the way students were asked to consider the impact of phrasing the rules in an authoritative manner – DON’T DO THIS! – or in relaying their ideas in a more inclusive manner. Additionally, students carried on a discussion concerning what happens when the rules are broken and their impacts on each other.

We ended the day with a dinner and gathering around the campfire that brought our wonderful first experience to an end.