Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Bearingpoint Caribbean’s Autumn Camp: Empowering the next generation of students

Summer break is not the only time to organize an awesome camp; this year Bearingpoint Caribbean (BE) organized its first ever Autumn Camp! The goal of this skills-camp was to have an impact on young people’s lives by offering them opportunities to learn, to discover talents and to be exposed to new and stimulating environments and experiences. Curaçao Cares invited Fundashon Kompa Nanzi’s leerinstituut Klimop to participate with a selection of children between the ages of 12 and 15 years old.















Kickoff!
Day 1 kicked off with energetic introductory words by MC ‘Tio’ Gino Jacobs, Senior Consultant at Bearingpoint. Every student also received a Welcome packet comprised of a t-shirt, a USB stick and other school supplies. The group then took a tour of Bearingpoint’s office, where they had a chance to look behind the scenes and speak with different employees. The students were really impressed by Manager Icheron Constancia, who spoke about his journey before and with Bearingpoint and the many opportunities he has had to travel and grow both professionally and personally. But the Autumn Camp was off to its official start when students were paired with a ‘buddy’, a BE employee, during the icebreaker game. The buddies hit it off from the get go. One could immediately tell that this group of potential IT specialists were excited and eager to get started!

‘Tio’ in the morning, Consultant in the afternoon
Each student was paired one-on-one with a BearingPoint buddy, meaning every student in fact had a personal Consultant/Analyst, Senior Consultant or even Senior Manager/Director devoted to supporting them along the way (the privilege!). A meeting room was turned into the designated Autumn Camp lab where students partook in different workshops on MS PowerPoint, presentation techniques and other IT and professional skills.They even got a quick session from consultant Kris Samsom on how to navigate the BE informed software platform. By the end of it they helped create a model that would predict whether they would pass the year: input = hasi bo best + (afhankelijk van) hal bon punto = output: exito sigur!”. The Autumn Camp classroom was filled with enthusiastic energy from both the students and the employees.

To inspire and to be inspired…
They say never to underestimate a child. This reigned true throughout the Autumn Camp. On Wednesday, the last day of the Autumn Camp, it was presentation time! The students and their buddies had a special assignment to work out a 5-minute presentation that would answer the following three questions; who is your idol, what are the characteristics that make your idol so inspiring and how can these characteristics benefit Curacao?

A panel of judges would pick out their favourite presentations. When the time came, a few students were a little nervous, seemingly going through Senior Consultant Menno Vinck’s presentation do’s and don’ts in their head. But all of them were determined! It was remarkable to see the effort that all of these students took to apply what they had learned, and to share what had inspired them and what they think should serve as inspiration for Curaçao. The winning presentation by Rajeev Sanchez was a smartly crafted powerpoint..but it was the message that was most powerful:”Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go”, by -T.S Elliott. For Rajeev, Alton Paas is a perfect role model for Curacaoans: a young man that was not afraid to pursue what he believed was possible and to persevere despite the obstacles.

The conclusion of the Autumn Camp: Bearingpoint Caribbean’s young and dynamic staff paid it forward by sharing their passions and talents, but they were also inspired as they saw the young students rise to the occasion.


For more pictures of the Autumn Camp visit www.facebook.com/curacaocares/autumncamp

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Spotlighting Giovani Zanolino on World Teacher Day


Giovani Zanolino
Giovani in class
In the month of June (2013) a Curaçao based mixed media artist, Giovani Zanolino, volunteered his time and talent during a visual arts project at the Van Houte School in Breivengat, Curaçao. He taught and guided the students in creating their own mixed media collages using photographs, magazines and acrylic paint. The results were not short of AMAZING!

We asked Giovani: Looking back at your volunteer teaching experience during the project, sharing your time and talent with the kids, how was it? And secondly, how would you describe a great teacher (in any field)?

Student Collage
Student collage
"I had a great time participating in this project. I was very impressed by the talent of the children we worked with. They had a clear intuition for color and form and I would do another project like this in a heartbeat. It was really fun and satisfying to see them surprise themselves. I enjoyed seeing the kids realise they have talents they didn't know of yet. I am  very happy too see Curaçao Cares stimulating our youth to express themselves in a positive way, and especially to see them giving these children more opportunities to believe in themselves. With time and nurturing we can help cultivate creativity, confidence and unity in our community. 

Student Collage
Student Collage
I think a good teacher must have the ability to communicate well, but especially to lead by example. All my best teachers were simply good genuine people. Through honesty and purity they connect to you on a higher, often subconscious level. So if you Love what you do, you will probably be a teacher to many. But for our schoolteachers I would suggest a good dose of patience and compassion as a big plus."