Bratstvo-Edinstvo School: This turned out to be a great project as we leveraged the foundation’s grant ($1,500) with local efforts to establish a day program at the school.
The school provided two rooms for the effort. Chess club parents volunteered considerable time to help remodel the rooms and the municipality of Ohrid provided funding for a full-time teacher for the effort.
The Goce Delshev Foundation grant apparently carried the day by infusing some much needed cash for the remodeling effort, furniture and equipment and finally some chess sets. According to the staff, our interest enhanced the importance of the endeavor. Much thanks for Boris Luseski for his coordination work.
report 2011Zivko Cingo School (Velgoshti), Vanco Nicoleski School (Leskoec), Kosel School, Vipala School and Goce Delshev School (Kuratica): In the Spring we provided $500 to Zivko Cingo School for the installation of venetian blinds in its computer room (1 room not 2 rooms as previously reported) and 3 CD players. Four schools under the administration of the director located at the Vanco Nicoleski School in Leskoec prioritized the need for gym and playground equipment. As a result we spent $1,000 on balls of all types, jump ropes, goals, exercise mats, hoola-hoops, bowling bowls & pins and a pump. I accompanied two staff to make the purchases after they researched the best deals in town. As we distributed the items we discovered that the Kuritica School located high in a mountain village is named after Goce Delshev the same as the foundation! The students kindly posed with the bust of the Macedonian hero for photos. Vesna Terzioska and Valentina Karagule did much of the legwork for this effort.
Classroom Connections
We have also made progress on the classroom connection project. Tara Affholter (Ellensburg WA-USA) and Margarita Ruvinova Niceska (Struga-MK), our volunteer teachers, have communicated well about implementing a joint lesson involving their USA and Macedonian 10-11 year old students perhaps in December-January. Communication is the big challenge due to the 9 hour time difference and need to deal with the computer tools available. Meanwhile we will add Margarita’s school, the Josef Broz Tito School in Struga, to our Wish List for possible future funding. We would like to find more USA & Macedonian teachers for next year.
Other Items
We put up 3 more chalkboards this year bringing our total chalkboard installations to 16. Bratstvo-Edinstvo School English teacher, Emilijia Paunkoska, reminded me that the school is still very much in need of books in English. She is especially looking for non-fiction. In addition, she reported that the Peace Corps funded a small library for the school. School staff diligently provided all receipts and documents we required. Finally, Zoran Sofkoski, our MSP webmaster, agreed to do some additional programming work in the coming months. We will update the current material. In addition, we may add a video section. See www.makschools.info for the latest!
