Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) Amanda Moulton has been named the Youth Outreach Star for February 2014 by the Peace Corps Youth Development Committee (YDC). Amanda is shining brightly in her community. While Amanda’s primary assignment is as a Math Teacher, she has also begun to reach out to the youth outside of the classroom in two very creative ways. Amanda has continued an Art Club started by previous PCV Eric Lacey with the help of her homologue Tiama, a well-known artist here in Burkina Faso. Together Amanda and her homologue have had two meetings already with the art club. Their first meeting was held to discuss the importance of art and to see why the students were interested in learning art. Most of the students wanted not only to learn how to create art work, but to study the history of different pieces of art. Their motivation to learn comes from the lack of art education in the schools. Amanda recently held their second meeting on the February 20th of this month with, 10 students attending (six boys and four girls). At this meeting, Amandaʼs homologue Tiama shared one of his works of art made from sand with the students. He also showed them the process he used to create the piece. Afterwards, the children colored sand with oil paint and glued it onto the drawings they had made themselves. Amanda said that the students enjoyed creating their own sand works so much that they did not want to stop. However, Amandaʼs work does not end there! Recently, she has been approached by students in the Girls Club at the school. This group of girls wanted to create a culinary club. The girls hope to learn about American cuisine in order to prepare their own meals. They have also shown interest in having a cooking contest to find the best chef among them. Though the project is still in the beginning stages, Amanda sees a lot of potential in the leadership and action taken already by the girls. She hopes that they will soon be whipping up some tasty recipes together soon! Who knows? Maybe we could be finding brownies, chocolate chip cookies, or some other of Amandaʼs tasty treats at local boutiques one day here in Burkina Faso!
