WOW day 2006

WOW day 2005

WOW day 2004

WOW day 2003

WOW day 2002

WOW-day has helped 200 street people in Bogotá to construct houses and start a kindergarten for 30 children in the neighbourhood.
Read also the News 2004 from our old WOW-day project in Bogota, Colombia
WOW-day has helped a foundation for abused children in Bangkok to build a new house for the children outside the city.
WOW-day has given 75 blind children in St. Petersburg the possibility of developing their creativity.
WOW-day has helped the building up of kindergartens in the townships of Cape Town, South Africa.
WOW-day has also helped children in Brazil, Chile, Croatia and the USA.

How pupils in Waldorf schools work for the projects.

This last school year we have added 10 new schools working for WOW-day. We now have two schools from Italy on our list from this summer onwards and one American school has chosen to participate.

But one thing these schools have in common: they all show good imagination. There are all kinds of ways to participate in WOW-day.

Often the schools chose a day like the festival of St. Martin’s or another day when they want to do something special. Some classes put on a performance or a concert. They go to help the neighbours; they sell cakes in the street, wash cars, work in the garden etc.

In one school it is always the 5th-8th classes who do the WOW-day activities. They have one day where they learn about the project and the country and one day when they find work to do either in a shop, a café, restaurant, at home or some come together and put on a concert for the local community.

We wish you good luck with your activity and we are happy to hear about your experiences.

WOW-day is organized as a cooperative venture between the European Council of Steiner Waldorf Education (ECSWE) and Friends of Waldorf Education.

ECSWE meets three times a year and has representatives from 20 European countries representing nearly 600 Steiner- Waldorf schools. At these meetings WOW-day is planned by an ECSWE working group consisting of:
Meri Arni-Kautu, Finland; Astrid Bjønness, Norway; Christopher Clouder, UK; Jeppe Flummer, Denmark; Kamiel van Herp, Belgium and Helmut von Loebell, Austria/Colombia.

To choose the projects we use the expertise of the staff of the Friends of Waldorf Education, and the money is directly transferred through their accounts and international contacts.

Parsifal in Santiago, Chile; Lar Benjamin in Sao Paulo, Brazil; a drop-in centre for drug addicts in Split Croatia; kindergartens in the townships Khayelitsha and Philippi, South-Africa; Wolakota Waldorf school in Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota, USA.

In 2003 St. Petersburg is celebrating its 300th anniversary. The events started in May and go on through the whole year with exhibitions, concerts, parades and all kinds of activities. Millions and millions of rubles have been spent on renovation, and many thousands of people from all over the world come to admire the golden cupolas, the multi-coloured mansions on Nevsky Prospekt and the hundreds of bridges. The tourists queue up for the great museums and are impressed by all this splendour.

But behind all this shining festive luxury there are some people who don’t notice any difference between now and then. They are the poor, the homeless, the orphans and the handicapped.

For two years WOW-day has supported the work that is done for blind children through “Art-studio”.

In 1999 the two eurythmists Alla Maksimova and Igor Andryushenko, started to work with a group of blind children in St. Petersburg. They had a room in the new curative school in the city, and they did afternoon activities with the children such as eurythmy, acting, modelling and painting. They also served them tea and gave the children fruit and sweets.

Now they have been working with the blind children for four years, and there are 7 groups, totalling 75 children from early years to teenagers, and 5-6 teachers are working with them.

During the first two years they were in the curative school, but then they had to leave the premises and since then have worked for two years in different rooms in the boarding school where some of the children live.

Now they are in desperate need of their own place and this is what WOW-day will help them with.

This summer Alla and Igor have spent travelling around St. Petersburg in search of an apartment. This big city of 5 million inhabitants has many worn down buildings; the new blocks in the outskirts, the grey 5-story buildings from the Khrushchev era, the solid Stalinist blocks and the old apartment-buildings in the city-centre.

With the help of WOW-day money from last school year and this year we hope that they will be able to get their own accommodation in the area where the children live.

Some weeks ago (August 2003) WOW-day had a representative in St. Petersburg who handed over 16.000 euros to Alla and Igor. This was the result of last year’s WOW-day action, and this enables them to hope for the possibility of buying their own premises soon.

Art-studio has made a video that shows the work with the blind children. Alla reads a text to the pictures:

“You can easily recognize children who have been blind since birth. Their movements stay almost the same, often for their whole life. As they don’t understand their body, they also don’t know its limits or possibilities. This makes them helpless both in body and soul. When you don’t trust your body, or you don’t understand it, you will never be able to trust the surroundings and can never open and give your individuality to the world.
The activities in Art-studio help the children to master their fine motor coordination, develop their feeling of rhythm and to be conscious of their own body. When you get the right feeling of your body you stop fearing the surroundings. This will solve many psychic and psychological problems.
In the first years of a child’s life it gets to know its own body and surroundings
through the ability of imitation. The small child learns to move, play and walk by imitating the grownup. Sight is the most important instrument in this process. The child who is blind from birth is deprived of this possibility. Therefore this phase of developing physical coordination is lacking, and this is the reason for many, many problems. But it is apparent that this gap can be filled.
In St. Petersburg the Art-studio for art therapy is now starting its 5th year of work. Its task is, in a creative way, to rehabilitate blind and weak sighted children with the help of different forms of artistic movement and some special gymnastics. We start with the baby, go on with the kindergarten age and end up with school age.”

WOW-day will help Alla and Igor and the other teachers do this important work with the blind children of the glorious city of St. Petersburg.

For people of Northern Europe Thailand has become the new holiday resort. Thousands go there to lie on the beach and swim in the blue sea. They are very enthusiastic about this beautiful country with its sun, smiling faces, cheap silk and nice girls.
What we should take into account is that the poverty in the back streets of Bangkok forces people to do anything to serve the tourists. While more and more tourists come to Thailand, an increasing number of children suffer in this new atmosphere.
In 1993 Montri Sintawichai opened the Child Protection Foundation, which was the first institution to help abused children in the country. Mr. Montri, his wife and their 12-year-old son live in the home with 65 other children.

Some months ago WOW-day got a report from a young Norwegian woman,
Kristin Lyseggen, who had visited the foundation. She also took the pictures that we are using in this leaflet. She met with Mr. Montri and a 24-year-old woman volunteer, Porsche, helped her to translate the conversation.
She listened to the story about four year old Yon who was raped by her elder brother several times and the eight year old Cartoon who has a scar from his stomach up to his throat after being stabbed with a knife by his father.
“Love is the answer,” said Mr. Montri, “love can cure all our wounds. Our aim is to build up self-confidence in their lives. Here the children will slowly be involved in a busy program with lessons, sport, art, singing, playing, camping, Waldorf and yoga,” Mr. Montri told her and he compared his home with the official children’s homes in the country. – “ They have far too strict rules and formal education. When they lose the feeling of being “at home” they neither learn to be models for others, nor to know themselves or feel what it means to be loved and taken care of. Through sports the children learn social rules. We also use art as a way to express one’s feelings. Through drawing the children can express their sorrow, and the fantasy that they have lost comes out again.”

In spite of the tremendous work that is done by Mr. Montri and the volunteers the picture is very grim. The Centre for Protection of Children’s Rights reports that child abuse increased by 50% in 2002 in Thailand. Prostitution is constantly growing, and as many as 40 % of the prostitutes are under 24 years of age.

Mr. Montri tells us that 98 out of the total of 275 children he reported on last year were so badly abused that they died. 2002 was a record year. The years before we had “only” 30-40 murders. Now the numbers suddenly are doubled.

After hearing all this we see how important the work is that the Child Protection Foundation does.

In January 2003 they managed to open a new building in a province outside Bangkok. They have been dreaming of this new house for a long time, and with the help of WOW-day money the house was built and is now the home for more children.

In the end of her report Kristin says:
“The visit to the Child Protection Foundation made a deep impression on me. It is almost unreal to stand among these smiling children who are so cute that I want to take them, all of them, with me, and then to think of the horrible stories I have been told. The small, beautiful innocent children smile and jump around full of energy and joy. Without any mask, but with inner scars and bad memories. They have a life experience which we hopefully never will have. Luckily they have got a new chance in life.”

This “new chance in life” we intend to help to grow, so we are keeping up this WOW-day project.

In Colombia there has been a civil war going on for many decades. It is very difficult to understand this conflict for anyone not living in the country, and if you live there, you have to be very careful. Kidnappings and killings go on all the time.

Maria Antonia Zarrate is now in her late 30’s. She started to work with the SOS children’s villages after her studies of social sciences. After her experiences with children in these villages she wanted to try something else for the poor children in her country. She gathered some people and started to visit people living in shacks on the street. There was a group of about 200 people living by the railroad. Here Maria Antonia and her friends, who called themselves Extra Muros, helped to take the children out into nature, do activities with them, make theatre productions, dances, festivals etc.

After some time Extra Muros got the local authorities to donate some land where 36 family houses were built for the 200 homeless people.

WOW-day supported Extra Muros from the very beginning.

Two years ago a new initiative was taken in the district where our 36 family houses are standing; a kindergarten was opened for about 30 children from this poor southern part of the enormous city of Bogotá. Maria Antonia’s sister Berta is a kindergarten teacher who had been working for some years in a kindergarten in another part of the city.

She was to become the first teacher of our kindergarten called “Corporación Waldorf Bogotà”. It was not an easy decision for Berta as it is quite dangerous to be in this part of the city and the families are not used to normal life with work, school and kindergarten. But she started together with another woman, and it appeared that some of the parents also wanted to help. They were very eager to help with the renovation of the house and some of them come to help with the meals and cleaning.

It also turned out that it was necessary to give some education for the parents about nutrition, hygiene and illnesses.

Maria Antonia has been the main organizer of this project, never afraid of going to the authorities, never taking “no” for an answer she has devoted her life to the poorest of the poor of her country.

She says that when she lies in bed at night looking up in the ceiling, she can see the faces of the poor and knows that in each one of them there are the same possibilities of doing something with their lives and also helping others to do something meaningful in life.

This year the kindergarten has got 32 children. In August we got a report in which they say that they have been to a farm with the children where they were able to drink milk from the cows and collect eggs in the poultry. They also sowed some seeds in the earth and will go there to see how they grow. This is all like a wonder to children who have lived all their lives in the city.

The oldest children are 5 years and the youngest 2 years old. One of the children is Jose Fernando who has been in the kindergarten since November 2001. He is 4 years old and used to walk the streets with his mother looking for something to eat. Now he is happy in the kindergarten, and his mother comes to help.

We will continue to support this project.

News 2004
from our old WOW-day project in Bogota, Colombia

When we started WOW-day in 1994, we connected to a project in Bogotá called Extra Muros. We helped this small group of 5-6 people to be able to build 36 family houses for 200 street people who had been living on the street for a long time.

These 200 people moved into the houses which are situated in Sierra Morena, a part of the poorest area in Bogotá. Extra Muros followed up by helping the adults to get work and the children to go to school.

We went on with the project, and with pictures, reports, videos and some visits to Bogotá and we managed to inform the schools about what we had done. All the time it has been Helmut von Loebell, part time teacher in the Waldorf school in Salzburg, business man in Colombia and founder of the SOS Children villages in Colombia, who has been our contact to the project. He has helped to find money for the project, and WOW-day has been able to give about 1/3 of what was needed.

In 2001 the project turned its task a little from helping in schoolchildren and adults to creating a place for the small children of the area: we started a kindergarten for 30 children, and the project was called: Corporación Waldorf Bogotá. Two kindergarten teachers went to the waldorf kindergarten in Cali for some weeks to study life there, and then we opened the kindergarten in this dangerous place in the multimillion city. The kindergarten teachers were quite nervous to start with, but they did this courageously and founded the kindergarten.

This year we have been able to help in developing this initiative further:
On 19th June 2004 we opened “CORPORACIÓN EDUCATIVA Y SOCIAL WALDORF.
This is a building which has got lots of colours on the outside, and inside there is now two kindergarten groups with 50 children on the ground floor.
On the first floor there are rooms for the school children. There are 35 in the morning and the same in the afternoon. As the children go to 7-8 different schools, and they learn in two shifts, this is the way to help them doing their homework.
There will also be rooms for workshops, so that the children can do artistic activities like painting, modelling weaving, knitting and music, and on top there will be a room for the caretaker and a guest room.
About 150 children come to the centre, and the parents with them to learn about nutrition, hygiene, illnesses etc. 15 of the children could not go to school because of a lack of money, so they come to the centre in the morning to do some activities which prevented them from going to the streets to work, use drugs or prostitute themselves.

There is also some contact to the teachers in the different schools being established, so they hope they will slowly be able to influence the general education a little.
Also a small library is established where the children can read and use the books for their homework.

The work that the group in Sierra Morena is doing is shown in different ways in the small community: in the last 6 years no girl under 20 has become pregnant, which is a great difference from before when it was usual that 14-15 years old girls got pregnant. That means that life for these girls is very different: they can study in school, and there is a purpose in studying when future can be more than having children.

There are 48 applications for the kindergarten for next year because the word is spreading that in this kindergarten it is very nice, the parents are greeted and shown respect, and the children get good food. It is a pity that they can only take 10 new children though.
Many of the children get very little food at home, so in the kindergarten they have one big meal when the children eat as much as they can. Then they fall asleep afterwards.

After holidays some of the children have lost weight, and then they must be fed properly to gain weight again.

If you want to work for the children of Africa, we can suggest two projects.

The one in South-Africa we have supported before, but now they are in a new phase of their development with kindergartens in the townships of Cape Town.

In a report from Cape Town from the spring of 2003 we read:

The Centre for Creative Education in Cape Town is a work going on the whole year. Here the women working in the kindergartens in the townships come to get some education. The criminality in the townships is very high so the education centre has moved into a more central area in the city, which can be reached by everybody from Khayelitsha and Philippi.

This year a class finished their four years of education, but they wanted more, so they founded a group, which they called ISISEKO SOBUNTU and which means “The Foundation of Humanity”. This is a group of kindergarten teachers working in 10 different kindergartens in the townships. They meet regularly and have decided they want to participate in courses for further education in Steiner pedagogy, and they will cooperate in developing all the kindergartens. They will help each other to develop the Steiner pedagogy further in the kindergartens and share the economical support that they get. This means that 8-900 children will benefit from such cooperation.

This spring all the kindergartens got curtains, which the kindergarten teachers made themselves. They also got climbing frames in the playgrounds, and that is very important in a place where there are no trees.

WOW-day will support the development of the kindergartens in the townships of Cape Town, and you can help us in doing that.

Waldorf initiative in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

In 1995 Mr. Shannoh Kandoh and some friends started to educate 29 children from poor families in this country which has been torn apart by civil war for many years.

After the invasion of Freetown all the schools were closed. Mr. Kandoh had 83 children and 4 volunteer teachers. Because of the civil war they had to stop activities some months later.

In the beginning of 1999 Freetown was invaded again, thousands of people were murdered, among them 17 children and 21 parents from the initiative.

When the situation became more stable Mr. Kandoh and his friends established a Waldorf school with 53 children in October 2000. Now there are 106 children in classes 1 to 4 with 4 teachers.

Mr. Kandoh himself went to England to train before returning home, and we got an e-mail from Abu Mansaray, who is one of the teachers in the school and also the coordinator for “Action for Child Protection”, which is an organisation working with street children in the country. They have been doing a great work to get the authorities to support the school, but there is such a lot of disadvantaged children all over the country in this post war period, so now they have not any support at all.

“Our needs are vast and increasing,” writes Abu Mansaray. “Our major needs are teacher salaries, a decent environment, learning materials and other school running costs”.

The initiative has had many difficulties, and we think it is worthwhile to try and support this initiative and help it grow stronger.

WOW-day will start working with this project this year, and we ask you to help us by taking this up in your action in your school.

WOW day 2006

WOW day 2005

WOW day 2004

WOW day 2003

WOW day 2002