Promoting our book exchange project

Despite not having ideal weather conditions, club GLOW Gevgelija didn't fail to promote the book exchange project. Most of us, the GLOW girls met at the center of Gevgelija to give promotional flyers to just about everyone and cute hand-made flowers to the women passing by. We heard many people are interested in our project and many other clubs want to "steal" our idea. Well, what more can we say? We are glad we thought of it first! :)
A very special thanks to our photographer (and future secretary) Renata who is in none of the photos bellow.

Book exchange project preparations & choosing new officers

We are both, happy and sad to announce that after this project the officers positions will be taken by the new officers who we truly believe can't wait to experience what it's like to lead our club. The officers election was done through voting and both, old and new members share the leadership of the club. 

However, we are currently very busy planning our Book exchange project. So far, we've put posters around town and we'd want to use this opportunity to thank the Apollonia Foundation for printing those posters for us! We've also collected donated books from the local library, high school Josif Josifovski's library and individuals as well. We want to thank our volunteer Kathy for donating books in English.

Having the posters made, printed, put around town all that's left for us to do is promote our event through facebook (here's link to it http://www.facebook.com/events/334380783264912/ ) and give out flyers to people on March 8th. We chose this day because it's close to the actual date of our project March 10th and because most of the people will be out buying flowers for their wives, mothers, girlfriends, grandmothers, aunts etc, so this is a great opportunity for us to promote the club. We were very creative and we spent our last meeting making paper flowers (photos bellow). Attached to those flowers will be notes saying that club GLOW Gevgelija wishes them happy 8th of March and of course flyers for our project! Besides, it's a market day in Gevgelija and we hope that we can let many people know about our project. We also wrote an article for Macedonian famous websites and they are going to publish it soon. We are very happy that so far we've got only positive feedback and hope that from 10 am to 8 pm will be enough time for the citizens of Gevgelija to bring an old already read book to the library and exchange it with another one! 

We also want to mention that the money we won from the contest were used for buying color paper, glue and other materials needed for this project. Having no other financial resources, the prize for winning the contest was very well welcomed and we want to thank GLOW Macedonia for that!

the poster for the project

one of the flyer versions (front & back page)

another flyer version (front & back)

beautifully hand made flowers

GLOW ladies making flowers

GLOW Gevgelija in 2012

Yes, club GLOW Gevgelija is actively working in 2012. In fact, we had couple of meetings on which we discussed many ideas. The first meeting was warm up meeting, sharing holidays impressions, but the next one we were already brainstorming ideas about new project that club GLOW Gevgelija is going to organize completely alone. After so many ideas and voting, we decided our next project to be "Book exchange" project and we are currently working on it at full speed. There are many things to be done, but with team work and excellent leadership, we believe that this project will be accepted by many people and would be good for those who like reading books and the local library. More details about this project will be written as its preparation progresses.
We are also deciding about new officers, since the ones that are currently running the club are high school graduates this year and leaving the town to university next year. Fortunately, we have couple of the young ladies interested in taking over the leadership positions and we hope that the club will have no difficulties to continue actively working. 

Christmas workshop

We haven't written anything on the blog for a while and we are currently on a winter break. But, we spent the whole month of December preparing for a project.The project we were part of is called “Christmas workshop” and it's under the auspices of the Apollonia Foundation. It’s an annual event right before Christmas. Club GLOW Gevgelija is collaborating with this foundation 2 years already. Members of our club volunteer every Saturday and Sunday to another one of their projects called “Nature day” where young children learn about the environment and how to protect it through fun activities. However, this Christmas workshop was all about giving in the Christmas spirit, and this is the second year our club is actively involved in it. About 100 children attended the workshop this year and helped the social family cases by making crafts that were donated to these families, along with food and clothes. There were 7 tables and on each table there was a club GLOW girl, volunteer of course, called captain table who controlled what the children were doing and helped them in making the crafts, along with 2 other club GLOW girls. The Christmas workshop was held on January 3rd and 4th at hotel Apollonia in Gevgelija. At the end of the second day all of the children that attended the workshop (and are part of the Nature day project) sang a song to their parents and got certificates of participation. (Club GLOW Gevgelija got one too, yay!) This was the first leadership event for our new members and they were so excited about participating and giving help to those who need it. We have to confess that it was pretty exhausting working with young children, but it was worth it, knowing that those people from Gevgelija and nearby villages  who can’t afford to have a normal Christmas now have warm clothes, food and Christmas ornaments in their homes and we were such a great part of making that happen. We are all happy that we volunteered to a good cause as this one.   

many girls missing on this picture. w/ Kathy & Dave

hugssssss

the children singing the song with us

GIRLS LEADING OUR WORLD!

having fun

still some girls missing, but this is CLUB GLOW GEVGELIJA w/ Kathy & Dave
and the two ladies responsible for this event

Friendship bracelets

Since our last blog update we've been busier than ever. 3 more meetings were attended by our club members that we haven't written about. This post will focus on making friendship bracelets. 
A friendship bracelet is a bracelet given by one person to another as a symbol of friendship. Friendship bracelets are often handmade, usually of embroidery floss or thread. There are various styles and patterns, but most are based on the same simple half-hitch knot. 
This was one of the fun activities meetings we have, besides the educational ones. Check out some of our handmade friendship bracelets on the photos bellow.

Career planning & interview skills.

This meeting was held on Sunday, November 20, 2011, but we couldn't update the blog earlier due to our busy schedules. 

From this  meeting the young ladies learnt to create career plans and goals that are consistent with their individual interests & talents, took the Myers Briggs personality test and found out how they can use it in making future career choices. They also had a chance to see two of our officers acting out bad job interview and discuss about what was wrong with the interviewee. It's still too early to have plans for university and make career choices, but we hope that the girls will have on mind what we discussed when they should make such big decisions.

<<PHOTOS BELLOW>>

we are so proud of our future pretty leaders!

two of our officers telling the girls about the topic of the lesson

the interviewer and the interviewee (inappropriate dressed and being late) 

the interview

few of the many mistakes the interviewee made