|
Menu
|
Community Service
Gingerbread House Building Party
The Sedona Rotary
participated in the second annual gingerbread house building party
organized by the local English as a Second Language program. The event
provides an opportunity for ESL students to interact with the English
speaking community represented by the Rotarians. This year's slogan is
"Building community one house at a time."
Sedona, Arizona is a tourist town. This means that workers are needed to
cook, clean rooms, bus tables, take care of landscaping…… Many of these
workers do not speak English, which means they live in isolation and
often in fear of being taken advantage of. Under the umbrella of St John
Vianney Catholic Church, Patricia Welter directs a program to teach
English to adults in Sedona. One of the challenges of the program is
finding times when as many as forty volunteer teachers can get together
with over eighty students on a regular basis.
The Rotary Club of Sedona has started a project intended to help improve
the situation. First, it has received a commitment for matching fund
grants to set up an English Language learning laboratory at the Sedona
Public Library. With this facility, students can work on their language
skills on their own time, and once they have been oriented on the
computer software, not be limited to times when both they and their
teacher are available. Second, the grant will help Rotary host to a
series of events designed to encourage relationship building between
Sedona's English speaking and non-English speaking communities, and also
promote the use of the language lab. The first event, a gingerbread
house decorating party, was held at the Sedona Community Center on
Sunday, December 14th. Almost eighty students, their children, teachers,
and Rotarians gathered for three hours decorating gingerbread houses,
gingerbread trains, eating food provided by the students (as well as
sneaking too much decorating candy and icing); "Building community one
gingerbread house at a time." The language lab is targeted to begin
operation in mid 2009.
|
The builders gather, ranging in age from 6 weeks,
if you count the puppy,
to 90 years.
|
|
|
|
First you have to put the house together and hold it
and hold it and hold it until the frosting mortar dries.
|
|
Then you can start decorating. Roofing in progress.
|
Remember, more on the house than in the builder!
|
|
Proud of their work - rail fence and all!
|
A special thanks to the adult community center for
making space available at the last minute!
|
|
