Multicultural camp finds fun in diversity
Inside the gymnasium at Sifton Elementary School, a couple of dozen kids shuffled and pumped their arms to Indian music, occasionally bumping into one another, under the direction of Shrina Patel, who is teaching Bollywood dance.
“Kids like anything that’s new,” Patel said Wednesday. “It sparks their curiosity.”
It certainly was fun for Eve Yousif, 8, who danced energetically.
“It’s my first time,” Eve said. “Every time we make a circle, everybody gets to go in and dance.”
The multicultural summer camp, which hosted 110 kids from ages three to 14 in the Clareview area, gives their parents a break, said general manager DJ Padamadan.
“These children will then bring this community into the future,” he said.
It began in 2010, a small camp of about a dozen kids from the South Sudanese community. It has grown each year, and young people come to play games, listen to speakers from different ethnic backgrounds, and explore their interests.
Lado Luala, executive director of the Nyarkenyi Development Foundation of Alberta, which founded the summer camp, said getting the camp going was a challenge, but it has become a success.
“We achieved our goal,” Luala said. “It’s not difficult if you have all these people in, the community in.”
It is part vocational and part educational.
In one room, a group of girls built dinosaurs with pink Lego — it keeps the boys away. It’s meant to get them interested in engineering.
“(I like it) because they’re pink and we get to make whatever we want with them,” said Channel Tengera, 6.
She’s a fan of T. rex — “cause he’s the biggest” — but has no plans to work in engineering or dinosaur discovery.
Swim teacher is the way to go, she said.
“’Cause it’s so fun,” she explained. “You get to swim with all the kids.”
Padamadan compared the camp’s programming to the Malcolm Gladwell adage — 10,000 hours of practice to achieve success.
“We’re trying to identify the early writers, artists and musicians,” he said.
At other parts of the day, the kids are taught by interns from the University of Alberta, helping them prepare for their provincial examinations. It’s crucially important, Padamadan said, because new Canadians can fall behind in school, mainly because of language challenges.
“If we can actually give them a little bit of support ... we might be able to get them higher in the PAT scoring,” Padamadan said.
But the highlights for the kids aren’t necessarily academic.
Wani Lako, 9, prefers gym.
“Because the gym is so fun,” Wani said, before heading off to run and jump down the steps.