Staff

Frohe Weihnachten & einen guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr - 2005!

Elke Porter was born in Toronto, Canada and grew up with two German-speaking parents. She moved to Germany in 1972, and then moved to the Canadian Westcoast all within one year. In B.C., Elke attended a Saturday German School for nine years, where she had the opportunity to participate in a student exchange with Hannover. As a career, Elke decided to go for her Early Childhood Education Diploma and spent eight years working in various preschools and daycares with all different age groups. In 1995, Elke and her husband moved to Sydney, Australia, where Elke got to know the Johannes Gutenberg Preschool, assuming leadership of the Preschool in 1997.

In 2000, Elke and her husband decided to come back to Vancouver, where in little more than a year and a diploma in corporate communications (desktop publishing and web design) later, Natalya arrived. After meeting Annette and her daughter, Lily in September 2001, the German Playgroup was born. Elke and Annette met once a week for two years, occasionally joined by other children. The first German Playgroup ran at the Coal Harbour Community Centre starting April 16th, 2003. In January 2004, the Downtown Deutschen Program started, as well as the "Deutsche Kindergruppe" at the St. Marks Evan Luth. Church in East Vancouver. Finally the "Deutsche Kinderschule Vancouver Society" was created in the summer of 2004 to work towards the goal of starting a German Preschool in Vancouver.

Since the Preschool doesn't exist yet, Kecia & Elke are planning to slowly phase in another day, so that the Programs would be run on Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday by April 2005. If enough parents are interested, an evening group (held from 6 pm to 7:30 pm) would also be a possibility. Finally, German courses can be taught to parents interested in learning German along with their children.

In the meantime, Elke is planning to offer web design, as well as selling ads for the German paper "Das Echo" and yellow pages ads for "Germans in BC" Website. If you are interested in these opportunities, please call Elke at 604 647-0951 or visit http://mitglied.lycos.de/vancouvergerman or spend some time at the new german portal: http://www.germansinbc.ca/ The major events for the German Community will be the Easter Festival on March 19th, 2005.

Bis bald! Tschuess!

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