„Girl´s Action Day/Mädchenaktionstag“ / May 2023
Hello!
In today’s blog, I will talk about girls‘ day, which is a very sweet special day. The Girl’s Action Day/Mädchenaktionstag in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt is a day where different activities offered for little girls aged 6 to 12.
It´s a network project coordinated by the Protestant Youth Association in Bad Cannstatt https://ejus-cannstatt.de/zebra/ in close cooperation with the Stadtjugendring Stuttgart and some member organisations as well as other organisations working with girls and young women in Stuttgart.
Every year, there are lot of activities offered independently, fun, energetic, motivational, where girls can experience new things and use their imaginations. I learned about this day for the first time when I came to Germany/Stuttgart, and I really liked the concept and idea, so I also wanted to add something.
In this way, the longest planning period in my volunteering adventure (approximately four months) for my workshop process, which I completely pushed my limits, has begun.
The workshop I created was painting and decorating fabric bags.
At first, I didn’t have much idea about how to do this, but after doing research on it and trying different materials, I asked my colleagues and the employees of the partner organization that organizes the event every year; about what this age group can do and what difficulties they might face.
And after that I decided to prepare some templates and also pens and paper for if the children want to design and paint different things as they wish. So it was a kind of guide for them with templates if they like but also I wanted give them some space for using their imagination and create by themselves.
As I said, the preparation process took a long time and I found the most correct variation by experimenting many times, so it was very advantageous and very useful for me to have time to work on it for a long time and try and change something.
We met once a month with people who offer workshops, help for workshops and organize things. We planned everything step by step, we went over it again and wanted to make sure we were ready for the day and this was very useful. I changed things many times. I changed the templates that I spent hours on, changed the materials and made it over again. I took different ideas and developed them more. When the day came, I was already prepared for all kind of problems.
In this way, the workshop was a very good and instructive experience for me. Moreover, the children were so cute, creative and fun that I did not understand how the event end.
I saw that my doubts were unfounded, whether the children would like the workshop or not, whether they would have problems with the templates, colours, brushes or more…
Because the Workshop was much more demanded than originally expected and we brought two more tables for those who wanted to join later.
This was proof for me that the workshop was a success. It was very satisfying to see the children laughing and having fun, that the time I spent was worth to something good.
It was a day that I was very happy to experience and that gave me a big smile on my face.
See you in my next post!
