Quite some time has passed since you received our last Choice to Choose Newsletter
Many things have happened since that time…

On 18th of November we arrived back in China and straight from Beijing we went to the Sichuan Province to Luzhou to meet Gijs, who as you know has been working with us for few years, and he was that person who was taking care for our families and kids in the villages in Anyue area.
You could read about his work in last C2C News and as well you can read more on our www, in the news section…

Gijs is working as a English teacher in the high school in Luzhou, which is located 3.5 hours away by bus from Anyue. It hasn’t been easy for him to take care of our projects there, as at the same time he had to teach full time in the school. But in my opinion he managed quite well. We wanted to meet and spend this time to evaluate our work in China and Poland as well as to think about the future… We agreed that if we would like to do this work professionally we can’t do this as our hobby; we should do this full time and focus on the work fully…

As you know for last few years me and Siyu were working in this system, we were teaching spoken English to raise money for our life and for C2C and after work in our spare-time we were trying to dedicate our time and energy to development and charitable projects in the villages near Anyue, to help unprivileged families and children in the area…
This sometimes lead to the situation that we were not satisfied with our performance in one or another activity, as well we didn’t have enough time for rest and our family life.
So something had to change.

From Luzhou we went to Anyue where we spent two weeks visiting families which we are supporting. Together with Ayi, who is helping us to do our C2C work for the last few years, we decided that we will continue our work for the families which still need our support and we will still try to organize a Children’s Day for all the kids supported by C2C during last 3 years.. None of us is teaching right now in Anyue, so we have no real place to stay or any means of supporting ourselves. We can only continue our work because Ayi decided she wants to help…

Right now we are trying to utilize our time fully for development work, so we decided to start cooperating with Yunnan Institute of Development (YID)
(www.volunteerchina.org), which has been working in China since 1999.
I started my adventure in China working with YID and it’s where me and Siyu meet. Siyu was a Development Instructor (YID’s word for volunteer)there and after the training program in China she went to Zambia to work with Humana People to People (www.humana.org) to do development work and help the people there…

For now our cooperation means that, I’m working as a teacher/trainer for the Development Instructor Team, who is preparing itself to do development work in the rural areas of China’s Yunnan Province, where Humana People to People is running development projects. Maybe some of them after 5 months of working there will decide to go and do development in India or Africa. You can read more about the YID, the Development Instructors and their work on the YID website…
Siyu is now a project manager for the HOPE project, which is focused on educational work about HIV/AIDS

We would very much like to start our cooperation by building a preschool in one of the natural villages called Benpi in Daxi village. This is the beginning of a bigger goal, which is to build a preschool, toilet and a culture room for the village.

We are asking for your help to support this project. If we want to build these facilities we need around $ 5000 US. We will send you more information in the next letter…

This project is needed. It is based on Humana research and on the request from the local community leaders. We really hope we can contribute in this way to their development…
Together with Humana and the DI’s, we will be developing the project and monitoring it as well. This is also a way to lay some foundations for star for starting up activities which C2C would like to implement here, like supporting the education for the poorest students, to help the poorest to survive, to organize Emotional Painting centers, to run Photo Projects and Paying Forward – a micro credit project, all of this in cooperation with Humana project leaders and the Development Instructors.

We will try as well to find more volunteers who would like to join the YID program and become a DI. The training starts every year in March and September.

We believe that in this way we will secure the sustainability of the work we are doing in China. If we would like C2C to work officially in China, we should first of all, have a lot of time and money to sort out all the necessary paper work and fight lots of little battles, which we think is really not necessary. We want to work in development, we want to use our time efficiently to support the people in need, to do our part…
So we believe this way is right for now…

We really hope it will be possible to start the construction as soon as possible and get all the money by the end of March when I will be coming back to Poland to start organizing the second edition of the Off Festival (www.off-festival.pl), International Volunteer Fair and Day for the Happiness of the Children. We really hope this year we will be able to start our local Myslowice Volunteer Center.
I would like to share with you some good news, we got a place for the Volunteer Center, historic place called ”Przewiazka”
(http://tarnowskiegory.naszemiasto.pl/zdjecie/65341_20_1.html )
We have to renovate it, so we must wait till spring. We will inform you how is going but if you would like to support this project you are more than welcome. We have really big plans for activities here. If you want to hear more, I can send you more info…

I think this is all for now. I tried to be precise but to still tell you about the most important things which are currently going on.

Many thanks for all that you did for us in the 2006 Old Year, we hope we will cooperate even more in the New Year. We wish you a very magical year, we hope you will meet many great people on your way and that during this year many great experiences will enrich your life. Share your smile and happiness with others who need them!

Kind Regards
Maciej Koterba

Our new phone number in China: +86 13988489694

4.1.2007

http://s60.photobucket.com/albums/h2/gyzz77/EP%20tour%202006/

A wonderful day to you from Choice to Choose China! I am back at home in Luzhou, Sichuan, China. For the past weeks it has been hot, very hot to my opinion: between 35 and 43 degrees Celsius! Good thing that my Emotional Painting Tour was in the Tibetan area of Sichuan. The mountains are always cooler! I would like to share with you a little bit what I have been up to this summer.

I mentioned the idea of going painting with children in villages to my good friend Fay Peiyan who lives in Chengdu and asked her to come with me (I could really use her help) and she had the idea to post a message on the internet for some volunteers to come with us. We got several reactions and in the end we were 6 people to go on the emotional painting tour. Packed with brushes, canvas and paint we went on the bus to the west of Sichuan, not really knowing what to expect, besides that it would be a small adventure to all of us.

After two days on the bus we arrived in Batang, a small town at the border to Tibet. It looks like a town preparing for a big economical boom. Most of the people seem to do fairly well here. Our first task was to find children who want to paint with us. That was not so difficult! We met children on the streets and we went to the local school to talk with the headmaster and at 2o’clock in the afternoon we had 60 children on the playground with us painting and having fun. It’s great to see the kids with the big brushes, sharing a canvas to make some beautiful paintings. They got a little wild in the end and I ended up having paint all over. Our first painting action turned out to be great success. The headmaster of the school enjoyed it a lot although we messed up the playground quite a bit!

Next day we decide to head back to Litang, known as the highest town in the world. The famous Tibetan horse races were going on there and we wouldn’t have wanted to miss it. Tibetan men sitting high and proud on their horses in colourful dresses and their horses beautifully prepared, waiting for their turn to show their skills to the audience. Thousands of people gather every year to see the spectacle. Hundreds of tents make an extra town next to Litang. This day we met a Buddhist monk who is running a school for orphans and poor children from the area. We were invited at his home and the first thing he offered me was a pillow full of oxygen and I needed it!

The next day he brought us to his school. He is supporting several of the students financially by himself but there is just too much poverty among those kids to support them all. The school was in a tent, the children are also staying in tents around the school. From season to season the school is moving around according to the weather. Many of the children have nothing else than this school. There are no real teachers but the monks who take care of the children are concerned with teaching the kids practical issues and religion. Religion is a very good way out of poverty in this Tibetan area. Religion is unbelievably important in their daily life and the monks are usually the only educated people here. I brought a picture book from my home country and gave a short lesson about it, showed the pictures of this different world, they have never seen anything like it and some things were hard to understand for them. Under the sun, on the grass fields next to the tents we unpacked our paint, brushes and canvas and painted with these children, in the beginning they didn’t know what to do. They had never painted before but after some time and encouragement they filled the canvas with colours and enjoyed their time. You can see in some of those children that they slowly forget about the world around them and concentrate on painting. A very nice experience! We have collected information about this school and from some of the students who need help. If you are interested to help I can provide you with the necessary information.

After our painting action we went to visit some people in the area to get an idea about the living circumstances. We visited an old lady, sitting in her 1 room house next to the stove. Above the stove were hanging the livers of yaks. She collects them when an animal is slaughtered. Because nobody eats the liver they are thrown away. She collects them and that is what she eats. She has nothing else.

Our host has invited us to bring us to a nomad school in the mountains the next day. We go by Jeep for about two hours on dirt roads in the middle of nowhere until we see a lot of children standing aside the road. As soon as they spot us they line up along the road, each of them carrying a silver white scarf (a sign of respect towards guests) and making a bow. We did not actually arrive at the school. To the school there is no road and the children had been riding their horses for 4 hours to get to the street where they could meet us. I gave them a small lesson about my country and showed them the pictures in the book. These children live 4 hours from a road that can be used by cars. They have never seen a town or a city, many of them had never seen a car. They couldn’t imagine that so many people can live together on such a small place as I showed in the book. They live in tents in the mountains and see nothing else. Their teacher was a monk who cared a lot but has of course only his own experience to teach and no materials or books. The girls there had absolutely no education and the orphans we met there… it made us think for long time after we left there… we couldn’t think of a way to help them…

Our host the monk is by now really good friends with us and the next day he wants to take us to his childhood home, a small village in the neighbourhood of Xinlong. A few hours by jeep on a beautiful road from Litang to Ganzi. After a few hours by jeep we stop at a hanging bridge which we can’t pass by car. We walk with our painting materials over the broken planks on the bridge (moving in the wind) towards a village a few hundreds meters further on. The villagers come running towards our friend the monks, bowing down deep to show their respect. We go into the house of a friend where we have our lunch…the children of the school here in the village have gathered on the roof of the same house and again I tell them a little about my country and show the pictures. After I taught them a few English words we start to paint together. The most fanatical painter today was the teacher! He was running around with brushes painting on the empty spaces he could find. Sitting on straw on the roof of the house, watching over the valley, village, river and the temple high in the mountains… is there a place I would rather be??????
The next hours our kind host takes us to the homes of his family over little paths up into the mountains, to places where my (western) world just doesn’t exist anymore.

We say goodbye to our new friends in Ganzi and move into a small guesthouse run by another monk who supports an old peoples home and two nunneries in tents a few kilometres outside the town. He kindly invites us to visit the nunneries and takes us there in the next two days. At the end of the road swirling up a green mountain we end up in the first nunnery, 5 tents where we spend the day talking with the monk and enjoying a quiet day with the beautiful view over the valley and the town far away on the hills on the other side. The next day in another nunnery we have brought the painting materials with us. The kids from a nearby village come to visit us and I start with trying to teach them some English words and play some games with them. It’s quite difficult to make myself understood of course and it was not so easy to explain the games but they do understand what the canvas, brushes and paint is about! With all the kids and some curious people around us we paint 1 big painting together. Our last one in this travel.

Going on an travel with a simple purpose: to paint with children and find out about their living conditions, has brought us to places we would not have seen otherwise. It made us meet people we wouldn’t have met otherwise and it confronted us with stories and circumstances that made us silent. Poverty here.. for these kids in the mountains… is something that can not easily be fought… the only chance they have is education. And not all the kids have access to it. We can’t help them all but we do have a chance to help some of them, kids that can make their school their home and have a chance to change their future. 

The painting the kids made are now in Chengdu. My good friend Fay has contacted some people to make an exhibition of the paintings. We will be able to get our message to more people here and maybe even sell them to make some money for these kids! Sorry to make the story so long! Anyway, if you have specific questions or want to find out what you can do, just send an email; I’ll be happy to answer it.  Until next time!!!
    
Choice to Choose China, Gijs Gruijters

Don’t forget to check out the pictures here!

http://s60.photobucket.com/albums/h2/gyzz77/EP%20tour%202006/

you can click on slideshow.. or just click on the pics you would like to see bigger.

29.8.2006

We worked in Yunnan Institute of Development for few years. We get to know eachother in YID, I was doing promotion for volunteer programs and Siyu was studying there before she went to Africa to do her 6 month volunteer experience in Zambia with DAPP.

Chen Jiang Xiao is a great and dedicated person, our fantastic friend. Together we organized few emotional painting activities in China.

• http://www.maciek.choicetochoose.org/thumbnails.php?album=28
• http://www.maciek.choicetochoose.org/thumbnails.php?album=33
• http://www.maciek.choicetochoose.org/thumbnails.php?album=47

Please see the movie about our friends:
(follow teh links)

• read about it
• watch it

Kind regards

Maciek

17.7.2006

In Myslowice after all the snow melted, everywhere you could discover lot's of garbage surprises. Together with our friends, volunteers who are working with us a lot, doing different projects, we decided to do something about it. Try to make beautiful places in our hometown clean from rubbish, plastic bottles, and glass. We started the project ”Myslowice without garbage will bring a happiness to all the children”, in Polish this sounds better and with a rhyme „Mysłowice bez Śmieci – Radością Wszystkich Dzieci”
 We started in 29th of April and from there we were meeting 8th times, every Saturday to work for three hours. We had great opportunity to spend some time together, to have fun, to talk about our future plans and in the same time doing something meaningful. After every action we were going to eat lunch together. We managed to clean: some yards in the living area near Armii Krajowej Street, forest near Slupna Park, Promenada Park, area near concert hall in Castle Park and forest area in Brzeczkowice.

In all these activities took part many people: Marta Jot, who were working during the most actions, but the rest of us were right behind her :) - Asia Kromka, aGATKA, Kóbóś, Iza BB, Paulina Strzałka, Klaudia Mariola, Ania Wojtecka, Aga Guja, Patrycja Jamrozik, Zuzia Tomaszek, Żaneta Marczuk, Karina Janocha, Natalia Musiał, Łukasz Żorawik, Paweł Olszak, Magda Wojtyczka, Kodi, Cheyou, Ola Bajek, Monika Ziomek, Mateo Durnaś, Grzesiu Mosler i Rafał Granowski.

 1st of July we planned the final activity, a great party in our local cultural center. We invited great Polish band Loco Motive Sun to perform and after the concert we prepared the after party with a movies and the DJ Harold. Was nice, people were dancing and having fun.

 We would like to say thanks, to the people who helped us to organize this, Myslowice President Grzegorz Osyra, for the Dariusz Wojtowicz and Donat Domasiewicz from ZOMM Myslowice for financial support.

11.7.2006

Spring in Sichuan province is very short! It’s just a few days between the winter where you can’t escape the cold (nobody uses heaters here!) and the hot and humid summer (two steps outside and sweating your clothes wet!)

A warm hello from Choice to choose China! Hot or not… we are still walking our hours to the farms to assess the needs of the kids and their families…

First of all I would like to tell that it we can see great progress in the situation of two families in our project! The family from Dai Ai yang and Dai Ai Qing from Sixian village and the family from Zhou Chang Yan in Qianlong village have used the opportunity given from us (through our humble financial support and by involving them in our pig project) to lift themselves out of the worst poverty and are working hard to improving their lives. With good results! Their worst problems are over. They only managed this through adding their own will and hard work and little help from our side! In the future it will not be so necessary anymore to support them financially.

Our “paying forward” pig project is coming to an end. After several starting problems caused by too little knowledge on both the farmers side and ours plus the disastrous effects of the pig disease going around in Anyue district we decided to stop our project for the time being. We had some success in the end of the project where several of our mother pigs gave birth to loads of cute little piggies but the price of pig meat is so low at the moment that it is impossible for the families to make any profit. Instead we decided to invest in an experiment with one of our farmers to make a fish breeding pond. Instead of pigs we will try to find out in the coming months if it is profitable to breed and sell fish instead! It involves transforming a rice paddy into a pond, buying an oxygen pump and finding out what the fish will feed on. Results until now are quite promising although the investment is quite high.

And then we had our children’s day! This year we decided to give the children a nice and simple day out in the city where I work, Luzhou (about 5 hours away from there homes). All of our kids live in tiny villages of less then ten houses in the neighborhood and most of them have never ever been in a place bigger than a few hundred people, so you can imagine how they reacted to walk in a big city like LUZHOU. I had arranged a bus for them and their parents to come here, we had our meals at a fancy restaurant and in the night they slept in a real hotel with toilet, bathroom and TV in their rooms! A luxury that they had never seen before. First we went to the cinema, they were looking with big eyes, the manager of the cinema gave a small tour for the kids to take a look at the projectors but I think they did not really understand that the projector was actually showing the movie on the screen! The rest of the day we went to a park. We rode the dodgem cars (they were screaming for fun!) and went to the zoo to see monkeys, a tiger, a lion and many other animals. For us it would have been a little sad to see the animals in their small cages but the kids and their parents had never seen any animals like this before, it was a once in a lifetime experience for them! I had invited a few of my foreigner friends to join us and by the end of the day the kids were running around with them making fun and enjoying their time a lot with them. A few of the older girls were still a bit too shy to really show how much they enjoyed themselves but the next day they had forgotten all about their seriousness!. After a huge dinner in our restaurant we went for a night walk all together along the Yangtse river (the longest river in China) there is a promenade with lots of food stands and Karaoke bars, and restaurant boats in the river but the most beautiful thing for them were all these flashing lights in all colors and the music coming out of every corner. After a long walk we went back to the hotel where my foreign friend gave little presents for all the kids and some bigger present to the smallest ones. Next morning after breakfast the older kids asked us to just have a walk in the city, and that’s what we did! I showed them some scenic spots and the center of the town and we walked and walked and walked. Even the youngest of the kids didn’t get tired of it. The kids who take part in our photo project had of course their cameras with them and they were shooting pictures of the strangest things! A few of the students in the school where I work had collected clothes to give to the children, we had books for them to take home and big backs of cookies for each one of them for their bus ride home. It was a great weekend!

see photos : www

Our photo project is doing really fine, the children are now familiar with their cameras and we have selected some of their best pictures for an exhibition. Of course the pictures are artistically not the highest quality but they give a very realistic view on the lives they lead. In this week the pictures will be sent to Poland for their first exhibition in Myslowice. Hopefully we will sell some of them and use the money for our project!

Now under preparation is our Emotional Painting tour through the Tibetan part of Sichuan province! You will soon hear more about it! If you are planning your holiday you are welcome to accompany us! It’s going to be fun!

Take care, all of you my friends! If you would like to write to me for more info on what we do or just want to say hello to me, don’t hesitate to write! It’s only a minute!

Gijs Gruijters, C2C, Luzhou, Sichuan, China

p.s. thank you very much for your support for CHEN JING, our first student from XUYONG. Through the support of 3 donors, 1 from America, 1 from Scotland and 1 from China, she will be able to start studying now! Something that was just a dream to her two months ago! Thank you very much!

26.6.2006

Choice to Choose Foundation would like to invite you to come and promote your organization and your volunteer programs so that young people from Poland could get a chance to experience a whole different life style.

We, as a volunteer ourselves for many years we would like very much to introduce this kind of life style to more people. As you know, volunteer work is a great way to learn by doing something meaningful, to help others in need, to meet great people from all over the world, to travel, and thanks to all these to grow into a real human being who is more patient, caring and helpful to others.

The Fair is going to be held in Silesia region, South of Poland, a region of high unemployment rate. People, especially young people here need good education and experiences to learn how to take responsibilities so that they’ll later be able to get in control of their own life and to take care of their families. We believe it is rewarding to do volunteer work because while we are helping others we are at the same time, helping ourselves.
The Fair will be held during the alternative music festival---Off Festival,
(www.off-festival.pl ) where organizers expect more than 10000 people from all over Poland and Europe.

We will spare no effort to promote this event and make it a great success. We’ll feel quite honored to have you join us in this special occasion. Should you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

Kind Regards

15.6.2006