December is sneaking up on us

Well, here we are the middle of November. Everyone around us is wrapping up their departments for the year, but we are just gearing up for December and the most hectic time of year for YMS.

Kathryn, a volunteer from the US and part of ASTEP (see below), has been with YMS for about 6 or 7 weeks now. She has been a real blessing to our team! She has already begun to work with the youth during our Saturday Live youth as well as weekly through dance and drama classes. She is even giving a ballroom dance class for all the adults every Friday night! She is a great asset to our team because she is not only developing skills in our youth, but also empowering the leaders and leaving tools with which to continue on after she has departed.

Kathryn has been taking the YMS leaders through classes each week to develop skills for our very own theatre project. We (as leaders) will be creating our very own piece of theatre through a project called “One World Through Theater”. In December, we will be taking this project to our youth to create a piece of theatre of their own as well. The exciting part is that we are partnering, in a sense, with drama groups in Seattle, Washington, North Carolina, and the Philippines. These three groups will separately create a dramatic piece and send it to us, as we send ours to them. We will in turn create a dramatic response to each of these pieces. The project will take us all the way through March when Kathryn sadly leaves us.

ASTEP is an American organization that has partnered with the Refilwe youth program for the last two December s. ASTEP, which stands for Artists Striving To End Poverty, will be putting on a holiday program for Refilwe and community children for three weeks in December. The program focuses on performing arts and provides the youth and children with dance, singing, and drama classes.

Not only is December a busy month because of ASTEP, but myself (Leah) and Piet are preparing for our wedding!! It is literally just around the corner and we are busy with finalizing all the preparations for our BIG DAY!

YHO! I’m exhausted just thinking about everything we have going on!

Blessings to you all,
The YMS team