For her final Clinton School public service project, Shenan Boit (’12) lived and worked in Asenovgrad, Bulgaria, where she partnered with Peace Corps Response and the Bulgarian Scout Organization to help Bulgarian communities create youth programs that promote leadership, volunteerism and self-esteem in children.
Boit and her co-worker Antoaneta Gribaceva, a member of the Bulgarian Scout Organization’s national board, created resources for recruitment, advertising, registration, and activity planning for newly forming Scout groups throughout the country. They also created a Games and Activity Manual for already functioning groups. All information was created in both English and Bulgarian and was made available online.
“Creating these resources has already started to increase the number of active Scouts in the country,” Gribaceva said. “Before, when leaders couldn’t think of something to do for the day, they might have canceled their meeting. Or when someone wanted to start a new Scout group, they may have given up because they didn’t know where to start. Now they can just go online and find the tools they need to start new groups.This is exactly the kind of thing we have been hoping for.”
The Bulgarian Scouts are part of a global youth movement that is aimed at encouraging young people to achieve their full physical, intellectual, social and spiritual potential so that they can contribute to creating a better world. They do this through hands-on activities and civil service projects.
Peace Corps Response is a branch of the Peace Corps that offers short-term, high impact, assignments for former Peace Corps Volunteers in areas throughout the world. All projects focus on helping people in interested countries meet their own self-defined needs while promoting cultural understanding between Americans and the host country nationals.
Globally, the number of active Scout groups is in decline, while the need for youth programming remains on the rise. The Bulgarian Scouts and the Peace Corps agree that an effective and sustainable way to encourage local youth development is by providing the foundation and materials necessary to easily start-up and run youth groups.
Boit partnered with the Bulgarian Scouts and the Peace Corps for her Clinton School Capstone project, one of three required field service projects she has completed in the Master of Public Service degree program.
The program is designed to provide students with leadership skills and expertise for careers in nonprofit, government and private sector service work.
Responses