News
ATA OPEN DAY
On the past 25th of January, we hosted the first open day of our project. We welcomed students aged from six to fourteen from different nearby schools along with their corresponding teachers. The goal of this event was to give them an insight of how we, as an association, work and what we can offer to this community.
Although we did not have a very clear idea of how we wanted to structure this open day at the beginning, we knew that it had to be something very interactive and fun. Therefore, we decided to divide the morning into four different corners: baking muffins, learning about Europe, music and dancing and pottery. The main aim was that the students could try different activities while getting to know us a little bit more. We split ourselves into three workshops: Timo and Serife directed the Europe corner, Alper and Quentin lead the baking and Javi, Vesila and Nerea organized the dance and music activity.
In the baking corner, the children learnt the whole process behind this simple but complete recipe: how to measure the ingredients, how to clean everything after its usage, the functioning of an oven, etc. Furthermore, Timo and Serife showed their guests the location of our different countries with the help of some Europe maps, and also got them closer to our cultures with by displaying pictures and other types of online resources. In the office, Nerea offered the students a brief music lesson about how to make rhythms with plastic cups and, after that, Javi and Vesila taught them an entertaining zumba choreography. Finally, but not least, the last corner was devoted to pottery. There, the children learnt how to make some basic but beautiful ceramic objects.
After the whole event had finished, we were very excited to hear that more than sixty people had joined us. Moreover, it was very gratifying to hear that the students had had a good time while learning something new outside of the classroom. Since we work from the perspective of non-formal education, we were very happy to know that we had achieved this goal. All the effort and the hours we put into preparing this event were rewarded with the smiles and the laughs that filled the whole building. 
I think that I can speak on behalf of all of my colleagues when I say that we are very satisfied with the results obtained. We are very happy that the participants got to know a little bit more of this association, and we hope that, slowly but surely, more and more people from this community learn about the different activities ATA can offer them.
