Access Students from all four Regions Celebrate Christmas Simultaneously
One of the important highlights of the quarter was the costume Christmas celebration party/enrichment activity, implemented simultaneously in all four regions of program implementation on December 23, 2011.
The purpose of organizing the event in the same time in different locations was to make it possible to connect the Access Program English Language Classrooms in Gori, Rustavi, Akhaltsikhe and Ozurgeti with a Skype conference. Ozurgeti classroom connected with the students in Akhaltsikhe and Gori – connected with Rustavi. During the Skype conferences that lasted for 20 minutes, the Access Program students in various locations got acquainted with each other, shared their impressions of the program and the celebration, wished Merry Christmas to one another and expressed hope to be able to meet in person one day. Most importantly of course, all these happened in English!
The celebration agenda in all four regions was very interesting and diverse and included decoration of the Christmas tree, PowerPoint presentations on various traditions of celebrating Christmas worldwide, gift giving games, Christmas Carols, various contests, staged performance, and the actual party.
The event in Ozurgeti was attended by Nina Jugheli, English Language Programs Coordinator at the U.S. Embassy/PAS and Tanya Gabrielson, English Language Fellow together with her son Anthony. The guests donated some English books to the Access Program in Ozurgeti, gladly participated in the celebration activities of the event and engaged in lengthy conversations with the Access students on various topics. Students showed great progress in using English for communication and managed to keep up an interesting conversation with the native speakers without any interpreting assistance. They exchanged their contact details with the guests and expressed hope to keep in touch.
“Access Program students tend to be shy and reserved in the beginning, due to their social status; usually, they do not have too many opportunities to participate in public events and meet interesting people. This program opened up their doors into the big world and made it possible to get them involved in various types of enhancement activities that contribute to the development of not only their language, but also - build their social skills and leadership qualities” Tamar Glonti, Access Program regional coordinator in Ozurgeti, remarked. “This particular event was one of the best opportunities for them to use all the skills gained through the program while being the creators and the participants of the event in the same time”, she added.
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Success Stories
 Dianne Zhambakhidze was once a shy and silent student, but that was before she enrolled in Access. It took her nearly a year to find her voice, but now she is one of the most helpful and friendly members of the group. Peers admire her diligence and hard work and always pay extra attention to what she has to say in class when she answers questions and gives advice on homework problems. > More Second rotation of the Access program in Adjara region of Georgia started with its own set of challenges. After consultations with PH, “Changes without Borders” the implementing partner of the Access program decided to cast the participatory net wider to the outer and more remote locations of Adjara. The level of education and achievement among youth, in those remote locations, is lower than that in the Batumi public schools. Although over 200 applications were received, general starting level of language competencies among the selected 25 Access students was dramatically low. The majority of students could hardly read in English > More  |
Georgia | 
