Marumofase High School Limpopo 9 – 20 – 14

Marumofase High School Limpopo 9 – 20 – 14

            On Saturday, September 20, 2014 the AISJ students arrived at 12:00 p.m. after the Limpopo students morning session with Project Dignity. We began by preparing the writing workshops during lunch to ensure a smooth and thorough event. The writing workshops consisted of taking photographs of all participating students to be published in the book, summary exercises, story shaping using the worksheet, and introducing new students to our project. In addition, returning Limpopo students were given the opportunity to add detail, characterization, and setting, key aspects of a short story, to enhance the imagery and effect on the reader. Lastly, we concluded the writing sessions at 4:00 p.m. with final editing and reviewing. This final edit with the Limpopo students will be what the AISJ student’s type and revise for the final published product. The future work on this project will only be minor details such as: cover, title page, contents page, layout, and pictures/graphics. This will all be discussed further in the second quarter during our Wednesday lunch meetings. At 5:00 p.m. following all the students hard work and dedication the reward of the sparkling pool with refreshments and food awaited them. We had a mini service celebration congratulating the Limpopo students on the completion of their ‘born-free generation’ short stories. The visit came to a close at 7:00 p.m. with the AISJ students departing. The Limpopo students spend the night and would leave early the following morning.

            Teamwork was a necessity on all aspects of this project. The completion of the ‘born-free’ book is the final reward for both participating AISJ and Limpopo students. This will be produced in the New Year. This two-day seminar has provided immense experience on communication skills, character, and group sessions that can be applied to everyday life. Areas for growth encompass recruiting new members from both the AISJ and Limpopo schools to make this a sustainable service project that provides international awareness and camaraderie.

            One of the problems that occurred during this visit was that some of the returning AISJ students were not present, as they had moved away, but failed to pass on their edited Limpopo stories. This caused a problem for the Limpopo student who had no edited version of their story to revise. Luckily, the AISJ students had organized original printed version as a backup. Still a bit time consuming, but it worked. In the future, all these stories must be handed over in both hard and soft copy to one AISJ student for safekeeping in the following year.