Thursday Sports Day and a Training with Sari Rose!

This past Thursday, the US Consulate was kind enough to link TYO up with Sari Rose, the Director of Coaching for the North Carolina Youth Soccer Association, who is traveling through the region as a sports ambassador. Ms. Rose has been leading seminars and clinics emphasizing how personal and social responsibility can be developed through the agency of sport. Being that our summer camp now features 2 hours of sports programming every Thursday, Ms. Rose's visit this past week was especially serendipitous. For the first half of her visit, she invited all our female staff, interns, and volunteers to take part in a work shop and tutorial. As she discussed there, her approach to youth sports is based on a conceptual model that encourages her students to work on five different levels of self-improvement at any one time:

1. Effort- trying new things

2. Respecting others

3. Having self direction- empowering kids, allowing them to coach sometimes

4. Helping other and leading others

5. Applying what they learn at home

Those are certainly lessons with a lot of pertinence for the kids we work with here at TYO. After finishing up in the classroom, she led the troop down and jumped into the ongoing sports activities with all our wonderful students. Check out the pictures below. It was a great, inspiring day for many.

[slideshow]