I had a 5 day visit to Bam and would like to share this great and unique
experience of my life with you. I witnessed  stories of sadness and happiness
 and I had tears of joy and sorrow. I had never pictured myself as an aid or
 relief person before,  through this experience I had the opportunity to know
 myself better.
 
 Well it's an hour and a half flight to Bam. The airport is now
 functioning having one flight back and forth three times a week  along with  a
UN flight. I had three boxes of paintshop supplies provided by our generous
 friends in iEARN.  As soon as I arrived at the site which is located at a
 primary school, two cute 5 year old girls followed me into the prefabricated
 room (paint shop) and asked what is this all about and started to
 draw a picture, very soon the room was filled with enthusiastic boys and girls
 eager to do art works for me. They would easily talk about their loss and their
 unfortunate situation, we became friends in no time they started to call me
 aunt Mojgan and they are requesting my return ever since. The school is
 working in two shifts girls in the morning and boys in the afternoon and it
 switches every week. So our classes were automatically divided by gender during
 the day.  Their age would be from preschool up to the middle school.  We
 experienced using various kinds of material and methods such as pastel crayons,
 guash(similar to water color but thicker),colored pencil, and collage.  They
were so happy to be there they would do 3 or 4 drawings each and those who were
 supposed to attend their kindergarten would come to us instead. I had also
 taken some books with me so I would read to them some of the time. I知 planning
to go back there again very soon, miss them already. We were lucky to recruit
an art teacher from Bam who has lost her parents and her one year old
son. She is running the paint shop for us at the moment.

You can follow the details on our website,
     www.saf.ir
the rest of the pictures are in CHILDREN OF BAM section.  We hope
to be able to keep the projects running in a long term period.
 Jason suggested that we should have an exhibition of their works at the
iEARN2004 conference and he introduced us to Joanne Tawfilis who owns an Art
 Gallery in Vienna. With her help we are organizing a fundraising and exhibition
program in Vienna following the conference in Kosice.
 
 Thank you all for showing us a great deal of support and concern through these
 past months.
 
 Warmest regards,
 Mojgan

Mojgan Momeni
iEARN-Iran
Science & Arts Foundation