EVIM Volunteers create a Rock Garden

17 youths of EVIM Wiesbaden, Germany were over for a work week during the framework of their Voluntary Social Year. Together they constructed and shaped a rock garden on the slopes of the Gusterita property.
They worked hard and showed a lot of team spirit while laying the ground work for the future herb patches.
They mounted and repaired a number of donated bicycles and visited the old town of Sibiu as well.

The Restauration of the Church Organ has been started off

The main parts of the church organ were removed and prepared for restauration from 28  to 30 April 2014.
At this point the organ offers some interesting perspectives: 

Conditional Landscape - Japanese Artists' Exhibition

The Japan Foundation together with the Brukenthal Foundation sponsored two Japanese artists, Rie Kawakami und Tetsuro Kano to work in the Gusterita Fortified Church. Anca Mihulet, curator in the Brukenthal Museum Sibiu ran the six-week event. The artists' work were exihibited in a workshop atelier to the public. 

Poster at the school gate

Tetsuro Kano and his objects made from locally gathered materials

A page from Rie Kawakami's draft book

Rie Kawakami, artist from Sapporo, Japan spent six weeks in the Gusterita Fortified Church working and living there.  The light aspect around the 700-year-old church fascinated her, in the way it entered the church space through the Gothic-style windows. She worked her impressions into some of her creations of light penetrating the walls: pointed windows charcoal-sketched onto the circular wall and shadows indicated with crushed roof tiles on the grass. 

On the chancel exterior Rie presented a cone of light made from ancient roof slats, accentuating the alcoves which have been closed for centuries.

Gusterita parish members at the vernissage Image: Elfriede Dörr

Tetsuro Kano's workspace Image: Elfriede Dörr

Traces of light on the ancient circular walls

Cone of light initiating from closed alcoves. Image: Elfriede Dörr

Anca Mihulet with a group of Gusterita Roma children   Image: Elfriede Dörr

'Dog menacing man'.  Image: Elfriede Dörr

Children take a tour of the exhibition. Image: Elfriede Dörr

The vernissage

Sound Workshop in the Gusterita School

During the week preceding Easter a sound workshop took place in the old school. 14 Students from the German-language primary schools in Sibiu participated. The children crafted their own percussion instruments from recycling materials.
Additionally they had a lot of fun with the ifa-sponsored Mobile Playground and took an excursion to the the Gusterita Hills. There was a enthusiastic response from both children and parents to the 'fun-approach' of the event.

How do roots grow?

On 9 April 2014 -during the week of Scoala Altfel (school in another way) - the fourthgraders from School No 4 visited over at Gusterita and did some studies about the soil in our garden.
After an introductory walk across the property the children divided into two groups (according to natural inclination...): the boys dug up the ground to find small creatures living in the soil and specified them according to the number of legs and shape.
The girls took 'snapshots' of interesting details on the ground by framing them with sticks.
Then everyone did a root-growing activity by planting four peas into a clear plastic cup. The cup got a 'blindfold', shutting out the light, so the roots would grow straight down. After a few weeks it was easy to see that the roots grow down quite a bit before the plant sprouts its first leaves.
In the end, the entire class got to play on the Gusterita Mobile Playground, sponsored by ifa in Stuttgart, Germany.

School Garden Workshop for Brukenthal Students

Last weekend, 22 nine-graders of the Brukenthal Lyceum and their teacher Octavian Pop joined the project Schoolgarden Gusterita. Pastor Kilian Dörr led the workshop and Mark Redden contributed his expertise. Roswitha und Günter Scherer laid a helping hand as well on the part of the Evangelical Parish Gusterita.

The students visited the ateliers of artists Tetsuro Kano, Tokio and Rie Kawakami, Sapporo. The artists are working in the school building for six weeks.

Green Restoration for the Evangelical Church in Gusterita

This article (Romanian language) first appeared in the Tribuna newspaper on March 31:

The Lutheran Gusterita Church is a tourist attraction and a historic monument. For the first time ever there is a green restoration to be undertaken thanks to the cooperation of three parties: the Faculty of Agriculture (Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu), the Faculty for Architecture (University for Architecture and Urban Planning Ion Mincu, Bucharest) and the Evangelical Church Sibiu.
The initiative is being coordinated by Prof. Dr. Ing. Constantin-Horia Barbu, Dean of the Sibiu Faculty for Architecture. It started last Thursday when Mr Andreas Kipar, landscaping architect from Milan, Italy held a conference in the 'Center for Scientific Excellence (Lucian Blaga University) on the topic of Integration of Historic Monuments into Present Urban Planning. Mr Kipar presented a series of innovative ideas and used the region of Karst, Croatia for an example.
Most pertinent for Sibiu, however, was the presentation of a long-term project of restoration and improvement of the Evangelical Church in Sibiu's Gusterita, involving the above-mentioned institutions.
The theories presented were then realised in the field. The students of both faculties could learn how to embed valuable architecture in urban as well as in landscaping contexts. He pointed out how a historic church may be reflected in the surrounding greeneries.

Karl Hann im Gespräch

Karl Hann, Romanian-Canadian agricultural expert, gave comprehensive and useful advice. He brings his rich experience in the field of ecological farming to this project and will be coordinating the work in the church surroundings.

Additionally, Pastor Kilian Dörr, his wife Dr. Elfriede Dörr, Associate Professor Dr. Liviu Gligor (Faculty of Architecture) were present, as well as many more faculty members and a large number of students.

Studenten machen Feuchtigkeitsproben

Schooling, Education and Job Placement for Roma

A Gusterita Social Project 

In February, the Sibiu Church Parish started a social project in the local Roma community, aiming at reducing the school drop out rate.

A small team began visiting the Roma village to find out which children and youths need motivating and what support would enable the children and their families to start or return to class.

Our social worker Mr Lucian Tenghea started out by evaluating all the Roma families in the Gusterita area, particularly the Macesului and Drum Nou streets.
He found a Roma community who is faced with huge material and financial problems:

• accommodations consisting of one or at most two rooms with precarious sanitary conditions
• insufficient food of poor quality
• lack of infrastructure and drinking water supplies in most accommodations
• most families living off social help and child benefit
• only four people have a regular job (reason for lack of employment is mainly due to non-schooling)
• children with behavioural problems, and problems of theft and begging
• children who were evaluated as mentally retarded resulting largely from lack of stimulation within the family due to the parents on their part not having been schooled
• parents who state that their children are marginalised in school and insulted for being unkempt and poorly dressed.

18 children with particular problems were identified. These are:

• children who dropped out of school
• children who never went to school
• children who are in school but who skip school to the point of dropping out.

Mr Tenghea identified the families' needs which as usual range from food, clothes and shelter to educational and medical support as well as counselling.
A lot of time and involvement will be required from different professionals (educators, medics, social workers, private persons) and institutions to change the existing behavioural patterns (for kids between 12 and 18) to create a base for acceptable behaviour (in children from 6 on upwards) and most of all to try and change the parents' mentality concerning customs, attitudes and behaviour.

Ecological Gardening Seminar

The "Green Church" started a series of ecological gardening seminars with Karl Hann, ecological expert from Carț who will guide us in setting up our school garden.
The seminar was attended by Mr Gross, chairman of the church board, the Farcasiu family, the gardening team of Șelimbar deacon team, the colleagues and volunteers of Gusterita as well as five university professors and twenty agriculture students of the Lucian-Blaga University, Sibiu.

Why should the soil not be ploughed? What is the purpose of weeds in a garden? How can we obtain humus-rich soil? Which plants complement each other? All these questions met with surprising agreement and with basic skepticism at the same time.

Agreement was reached on the following points: the series of seminars will continue with practial work in the garden. The university will undertake to test the soils in the various parts of the property while the students will share in planting trees for "green filters" and the orchard. They are joined by the Agency for Environment and Romsilva. The students will develop and realise a concept for garbage recycling and removal for the entire property. 

Preparations for the Gusterita School Garden

A sunny day helped everyone to come out of their hibernation. The parish field is being cleaned of corn stubs and will be turned into a school garden teaching ecological gardening.

16 volunteers from Gusterita and Sibiu gathered quickly and shared in the work on Saturday afternoon, 22 February. As you can see, the work was finished soon, even the little ones worked hard to help. 
Afterwards, there was tea in the school kitchen. The children had lots of fun using the new mobile playground, sponsored by ifa Stuttgart, Germany.

Clown Workshop in Gusterita

From 3 February to 7 February, the parish house and the old school hosted a clown workshop for the children of the German-speaking primary classes. The kids learned clowning basics and enthusiastically did a show for their parents and grandparents on the final day.
They had lots of fun and felt very inspired about learning in a playful way. Taking a bow, moving on stage, taking care of their costumes, learning to move, feel and talk like a clown challenged their coordination and motor skills.
After the show the new mobile playground was inaugurated with the clowning kids being the first ones to use it. The mobile playground was sponsored by the Institute for Foreign Relations (ifa) in Stuttgar, Germany.
The all-day holiday program is offered as an extra-curricular activity in German to create educational opportunities for children to playfully develop new life skills.

Neighborhood Meal

Starting the New Year 2014 the Gusterita Church hosted a neighborhood meal on the school sports ground.

As it is planned to develop an ecological garden from spring onwards, it was advised to make a first contact with the Roma population in Gusterita. The church grounds are frequently being entered and used in an unpleasant way. To ensure a peaceful co-existence with the Roma community we served a hot one-pot meal.

In spring a project will be started aiming at reducing the drop out rates of school children.

The Sibiu confirmands helped to serve the meals and went for a round of soccer with the local Roma kids.

ARAPAMESU, a local American NGO shared in the organisation of the event. They keep good relations with the Roma community and help more than 40 children with their homework, and humanitarian aid.

Not all families attended the meal - for reasons of embarrassment, we found out. Therefore a team took a huge pot of stew door-to-door. They shared their shocking experience with us.  None of us had known the situation there.