A Final Hoorah from the Barzakh Crew

The Barzakh crew has accomplished a lot since our last post.  We finalized our curriculum manual, surveyed the community in order to write our needs assessment, completed our final report, and presented to our UVM project partners regarding the development of the Barzakh Falah challenge course. At the end of our presentation, we presented Nancy with the gift of the trolley, which is a great team building and communication game that requires six participants to move in unison in order to move two 2"X4"X8' planks.

Testing out the trolley with some friends in the neighborhood

Unfortunately, much of our work on the development of the hexagonal structure was postponed due to a three week delay in the delivery of our poles and cross beams.  Demelza, bless her heart, even went to the length of baking the driver sugar cookies in order to persuade him to deliver our materials.  Ultimately, it took Dylan's daily visits to the lumber yard and numerous phone calls to get the poles delivered.

The beautiful challenge course site location

At this point, we have installed all six of the poles and two of the cross beams and begun to assemble the challenges on the sides.  We are trying to complete it in time for April 9th when Camp Elevate comes to Barzakh Falah to test out the curriculum manual for the first time.  The kids will have the additional treat of testing out the tree house platform that we constructed with Jaime's guidance and a generous donation from Pine Lumber.  It is approximately 100 square feet and located about 18 feet up a "stinky foot" tree which is currently in beautiful bloom.  It is a perfect location for reflection and healing. We have installed climbing grips up one side of the tree and also plan to add a pressure treated ladder up to the opening.  We also installed railings for safety.

John admiring our handy work

We have really enjoyed our time developing the challenge course at Barzakh Falah with Jaime and Nancy and hope to see it continue to develop under future volunteer groups.  We were thrilled when Nancy informed us that a group from the University of Georgia will continue work on the challenge course in the coming months.

Over and Out,
The Barzakh Crew
John N., Dylan E., Demelza L., Heather S., Julia P.