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Julia Berg captures the fun our kids have playing games after school at the Carver Community Center

By Julia Berg

After the start of the next round of Sharks and Minnows is announced, the K-5 students line up on the gym wall and make their way past the taggers.

Some students sprint across immediately, some wait for a clear path before they make the dash, and others try to go under the taggers’ radar by walking across.

Skylar, a student from the K-2 group who asked to be the tagger, succeeds in tagging a couple of other students. After the group switches to playing “red light green light” for a bit, the students begin a game of Simon Says, with the counselor giving the directions at first.

The students play a round with the counselor, copying actions such as touching their shoulders and hopping on one foot. A 3-5 group student asks and gets to be the leader of the next round. They work hard at being the leader, allowing students who are eliminated from the game to still play for fun and giving everyone a second chance after it was pointed out that he gave one to one of them. He directs them to make fun moves, such as waving their arms above their head and doing a split to the best of their ability. They play Simon Says, and Geo leads the game until they leave for their next after-school activity at the Carver Community Center.

Volunteer Julia Berg tells us lively stories about our summer and after-school students at the Carver Community Center. See more of her stories here.

Give to Carver kids on Giving Tuesday, 11/29!

GivingTuesday is a global generosity movement unleashing the power of radical generosity. GivingTuesday was created in 2012 as a simple idea: a day that encourages people to do good. Since then, it has grown into a year-round global movement that inspires millions of people to give, collaborate, and celebrate generosity.

From a viral hashtag to a global movement, #GivingTuesday is reimagining a world built upon shared humanity and generosity.

Honoring All Who Served

Today, the country honors those who served and are serving in military. Veterans Day became an official federal holiday in 1938. Also founded in 1938, the Carver community has much to remember and honor today.

Sunday will mark the 40th anniversary of the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. More than 58,000 names of every US service member who died or went missing in the Vietnam War have been read this week leading up to a Veterans Day Observance at the memorial today.

If anyone ever doubts the capacity of our young people today to achieve lasting greatness, let’s remember that the wall, consisting of two 200-foot-long sections of black granite listing the names in chronological order, was designed by then-21-year-old Yale student Maya Lin and cost $8.4M to construct. More than 5 million people each year visit the wall, making it one of the most visited memorials on the National Mall. See some of the items that have been left at the wall.

You can watch Veterans Day ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery here.

Carver's 84th Public Annual Meeting of the Board of Directors

Carver CEO Novelette Peterkin looks on as Stephanie Thomas, a freshman legislator from Norwalk, the newly elected CT Secretary of the State, and a longtime Carver volunteer, greeted our Annual Meeting gathering

We invite the public annually to the Annual Meeting of Carver’s Board of Directors. A new board is constituted at this meeting. Each board committee leader presents the outcomes of the last fiscal year (2021-2022). We discuss new business. And we celebrate our staff, volunteers, partners, and donors and greet old and new friends.

Here is the Annual Meeting Report.

Here is the message our CEO Novelette Peterkin gave from the podium.

Thank you for being a vital part of the Carver community.

Carver was founded in 1938 as a supportive community in a new industrial age. Carver remains more committed than ever to its first principles in this new age that requires us to rethink assumptions about education.

New upheavals in our common world require vigilance and innovation. We address pandemic learning loss with intensive, personalized interventions and project-based learning. We are balancing goals for our youth to achieve college degrees with K-12 workforce development education that leads to in-demand jobs. We remain committed to our goal that every child progresses to the next grade on time and is well prepared for the work ahead.

Our namesake George Washington Carver persevered against all odds. We do the same. Our annual budget doubled over the last two years, and we are discussing today with new school districts how Carver might help them meet their goals.

This may still be the early years of Carver’s important work. All our successes last year and the years before prepared us for this moment when Carver is needed more than ever.

All of you have seen the headlines. Pandemic-era learning loss is a national emergency. Catching up an entire generation of students is among the most pressing tasks facing leaders at every level of government today. Key to helping our children learn is giving them more time to learn, which is exactly what Carver is the best at providing. Schools and communities will be investing more and more in after-school enrichment programs and expanded summer school.

The school calendar drawn in the 1900’s is outdated. Still committed to our values and principles established in 1938, Carver is here to provide unique solutions that meet the challenges our nation faces today.

Thank you for being such a vital part of our journey.

Igniting stories about children.

John Lewis & Partners use their 2022 Christmas ad to ignite conversations about children in care. This year’s ad shows the touching but bruising efforts of a foster dad determined to learn how to skateboard to share his new foster daughter’s passion for skateboarding.

Each year, the trend John Lewis started works because they have transformed the advert from something we want to ignore or fast-forward into something we want to watch. As human beings, we love a story. Here is the 2018 video that also speaks to themes that animate the Carver mission — nurturing the gifts that all our children possess.

From Israel to Rowayton, a new fun game has our students getting good exercise!

“Our kids are absolutely gaga for Gaga Ball,” reported Dean Vaccaro, our Lead Coordinator at Roton Middle School and a certified teacher during the day. “Very happy we have it in the RAMS afterschool program. “It is very competitive, a great cardio workout, and loads of fun.”

Gaga is a fast-paced, high-energy sport played in an octagonal pit. Dubbed a kinder, gentler version of dodgeball, the game is played with a soft foam ball, and combines the skills of dodging, striking, running, and jumping while trying to hit opponents with a ball below the knees. Players need to keep moving to avoid getting hit by the ball. Fun and easy, and as Mr. Vaccaro reported above, everyone gets a serious workout.

All players start with one hand touching a wall of the pit.

  • The game begins with a referee throwing the ball into the center of the pit.

  • When the ball enters the pit, the players scream 'GA' for the first two bounces, and 'GO' on the third bounce, after which the ball is in action.

  • Once the ball is in play, any player can hit the ball with an open or closed hand.

  • If a ball touches a player below the knee (even if the player hits himself or herself) he or she is out and leaves the pit. If a player is hit above the knees, the play continues.

  • If a ball is caught on a fly, the player who hit the ball is out.

  • Players cannot hold the ball.

  • If needed, a second ball can be thrown in the pit to expedite the end of the game. The last player standing is the winner of that round.

The origins of gaga have remained largely a mystery since its first appearance in the mid-20th century. However, the predominant theory is that it was invented in Israel and exported to other countries worldwide, usually as a game played by children at summer camps.

In any event, Gaga ball is a dodgeball variant that has been sweeping through school districts in the past several years.

The game is thought to have started in Israel — gaga means "touch touch" in Hebrew — and was played in Jewish summer camps beginning in the 1970s, according to a 2012 article in The New York Times.