Encouraging leadership

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Empowering residents with Ché Amigo

A big part of our Camp to CampUs philosophy is that we like to work together with the residents of our CampUs’es to create a safer and humane environment. The Ché Amigo foundation has over a decade of experience in leadership projects in difficult environments, so we’re very happy to announce that they will collaborate with us on Lesvos to empower our residents!

The Ché Amigo program mainly works in disadvantaged communities in South-America, and revolves around three questions that are being asked to the participants:

1. What do you like to do?
2. Wat are you good at? 
3. What would you like to change in your community?

By looking for an answer to these questions, people are taught to set up their own project. This includes funding, so if money is necessary for their small project, they have to think about how they will raise the funds and write this in a project proposal. 

Jasper Wegman, founder of Ché Amigo explains how a regular program works, “We teach our participants in several weeks to be active, to see what their talents are and how they can contribute to their surroundings. An example could be that there’s a boy who likes to play football. We help him to organize a football tournament in his community, so that he learns how he must organize something like that and the community kids have a nice tournament they can play.”

On Lesvos this situation will be different than in other places, and that’s exactly what Ché Amigo is looking into first. “Donna and Lailay will try to figure out how we can implement our project here, while the circumstances are very different than elsewhere. People will often deal with trauma, and never know for sure how much time they’ll be on Lesvos. This makes scheduling a project more difficult. I can also imagine that due to trauma, people are less likely to open up,” Wegman adds. 

Ché Amigo will do some test courses the coming four months to see if their program is viable on Lesvos. If so, odds are that it will be expanded later on. Keep an eye out for updates by Donna and Lailay from Lesvos the coming months! 

We can only set up projects like these with your support! Are you keen on helping, in any way? Take a look at our 'How can I help' page. 

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