Here are a few of our fabulous young people who worked together to create something new to promote tourism in their community. The project is called Through A Lens, Romania and through weekly lessons, research materials, CNN iReports, newspapers, local businesses, great teachers-Maria, Renatta, Diana and Cristina- who offered a hand to learn for next year's group, a wonderful support system of family and mentors, myself, the coordinator and developer of this project, and my colleague, Corina, the grant administrator for our Youth in Action funding, they created a logo, a t-shirt design, posters, brochures, a Facebook group page, Animoto mini-videos, an interview, calendars and postcards which depict some of the views they see here in their own town. They also wrote their own autobiographies, learning to write English more effectively in the process. All the lessons were presented in English and that in itself was a great way to reinforce their learning in other courses. The Romanian newspaper, ACUM, was a place to show off their weekly theme photos with others far away.

Today, they went to their high school to talk about the experience with their peers and see if some of them want to join in next year to make their mark on the town with their own skils in digital photography. They showed their calendar photos and postcards around and the others were very proud of their friends.

This past weekend, we had held a successful debut gallery exhibition and now, for the coming weeks, the photos will be on display in the county library here in the neighboring city of Cluj-Napoca for the month.

It was an experience for all of us, for them, especially, to put their knowledge to use and work as a team and I'm sure that they now have a great amount of tools to do even more next year with their energy, creativity and photojournalist selves by way of Through A Lens, Romania.

You can read news about the exhibition here:

http://www.realpress.ro/un-semnificativ-eveniment-s-a-desfasurat-la-campia-turzii-asociatia-parinti-pentru-copii%E2%80%99%E2%80%99-vine-cu-proiectul-%E2%80%9Cin-ochiul-lentilei%E2%80%9D

http://www.ziarul21.ro/new/index.php/lifestyle-a-timp-liber/cultur/9775-through-a-lens-a-ajuns-la-final

And see pictures of their first exhibition and other information related to the project here on our Facebook group page:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/ThroughALensRomania/

Thanks for watching and giving them a hand for what they accomplished to impact their world through this project.

(The calendars and postcards we printed were distributed to 500 people, free of charge, to remind them how much we all like living in Campia Turzii!)