Serious Clubbing

At the moment I'm sitting in my office prepping for one of my weekly English clubs, and figured I'd write a quick post about the kinds of clubs I lead every week. First off, you should know that Peace Corps loves clubs. I mean, LOVES clubs. Peace Corps is pretty convinced that community clubs make the world a better place, and in many ways this is true. Clubs that volunteers lead provide a safe space for youth to hang out, interact with their peers, and get a decently structured hour of after-school programming. Clubs are also an easy way to get a foot into the community door and to show your place of employment that even though you don't know the language very well, you're getting things done and working with youth. Hence, we do a lot of clubs around these parts. 

Quite honestly, I don't really like clubs all that much. I'm not quite as beholden to their magical powers as my Peace Corps superiors, but my organization wants me to run clubs, so I run clubs. 

On Mondays, I run a 90-minute English club for beginners at my organizations office. It's called "English Stars". My director thought it was really important that it have a name, so I let her choose. I have about 6 regular participants (which is a small group, but a good size considering we only have 6 chairs in our office), all girls between the ages of 16 and 20. They're a good group, but they really don't know any English and seem to be hoping that I can teach them to speak fluently overnight. They're not terribly patient, and not terribly willing to put in any extra study time. I bribe them with chocolate and the translations of their favorite song lyrics (usually Rihanna, Beyonce, or Britney Spears) to keep them motivated and engaged. For the month of February, we're doing a unit on biographical information; appearance, character traits, birthdays, family, work, hobbies, these sorts of topics. Most of our clubs start about like this:

Me: Today we'll be talking about character traits and personality. 

The English Stars: In Russian? 

Me: Is this Russian club? 

The English Stars: No, it's English club. 

Me: So probably English, don't you think? 

The English Stars: But it's easier in Russian. 

They generally mean well, and they're good kids, they're just still figuring this whole language learning business out. 

Other than my organizations clubs, I also help out with other clubs that the volunteers here run as a group. We take turns leading to keep things interesting. On Tuesday we run an advanced English club at the American Corner of a local library. ( American Corners are amazing and wonderful things financed by the US Embassy. The American Corner in Shymkent has a conference table and chairs, a computer and internet, and a small English language library. It's a great space for English clubs, and the local staff are pretty great.) At this club we cover all sorts of topics from holidays to cooking to music. This month my pal Phillip is running a series of clubs celebrating Black History Month. 

Wednesday is Women's Club day. I help lead this club with 2 other volunteers. It's more of a discussion group than a club, and is conducted entirely in English. It's a safe space for women to come and discuss topics that they often can't openly discuss at home or at school (sexual health, gender politics, all kinds of things). It's pretty sweet. This is one place that I can really feel the difference I'm making here. We bring topics to Women's Club that locals have never even considered, you can see their minds opening up and their perspectives changing. It's pretty sweet. 

After Women's Club we run a movie night at an old Soviet move theater. We show movies in English with English subtitles, and provide important vocabulary and questions about the  film plot and characters. It's a nice, chill end to the day. 

Thursday one of my sitemate's runs a beginner's English club at the American Corner. When she's out of town, I take over for her. 

Friday I run a volunteer club at my organization. We have about 10 serious local youth that come for the meetings. Right now I'm starting from the very beginning with them, discussing volunteerism, service, and community. There's no concept of volunteerism in Kazakhstan, so you have to start small. It's a challenge convincing my co-workers that we can't just leap right in with this group and give them huge assignments, because if we do that we'll lose them. We need to figure out what they're passionate about, what change they want to see in their community before we go any further. This is my most challenging club because it's run entirely in Russian, and my Russian really isn't good enough to discuss any of these sorts of things. But I try. I try really hard, and some days it seems like my volunteers are getting into the volunteer spirit. 

After volunteer club I jet across town to a cafe where a local friend holds a conversational English club. It runs for 90 minutes and usually draws about 30-35 locals of all ages. We volunteers come to provide native speaker support, and to lead conversations. The only topics off limits are politics and religion. Other than that, any topic is fair game. 

Well, dear reader, that's my weekly club schedule. As you can see, we're serious about our community clubbing here in Peace Corps.