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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

Volunteering at the MCC Child Care Center


April is National Volunteer Month! Every spring Shahin Monshipour volunteers to spend a few hours with the children at the MCC Child Care Center to work with them on fun and educational projects to learn about other cultures. Last year she taught a group of about 40 children about East Africa, its tribes, animals, music, dance, food, and stories. 

This year Anne Barker, Child Care Center director, invited Monshipour to teach students about the Iranian culture and the Persian New Year. This project had been done in the past and was a favorite among the Child Care students and their teachers. She helped the students learn about the ancient celebration, how to arrange a traditional "Haft Seen" (the Persian Table of symbolic objects), and how to plant and grow little trays of greens from tiny seeds as symbols of spring, love of nature, and hope for a good year.

Monshipour and the teachers helped the children in preschool classes celebrate the last day of  "Nowruz" holiday by enjoying music, lighting candles, and floating their fully grown green sprouts on water. "Usually we float the greens and hyacinth petals on running rivers, or creeks, symbolically returning them to mother nature, but because the weather is too cold for the kids to use water outside we floated them inside in one of the classroom water tables," Monshipour said. According to Barker, "Our children love these projects. Shahin's volunteer work is a great hands-on Anthropology lesson on cultural awareness for all of us.  Our students learn a great deal from Shahin’s lessons since so many of our students and their parents come from many diverse backgrounds." 

Janet Ekis
College and Community Relations
05/01/2009