You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January 2012.
Calling all our former Arusha Volunteers! Here is a message from one of our partners in Tanzania, The Umoja Centre.
A Big Thank You to All Our Wonderful Supporters
As a friend or supporter of The Umoja Centre, you will be aware that we are a school that is different from most others. The students that attend are from the urban slum areas of the city of Arusha and are among some of those most in need in Tanzania. Because of extreme poverty they have been forced out of the education system and have little hope for the future. We help change their future prospects by offering them the opportunity of a free education and help to secure meaningful employment. The good news is we have found sponsors for almost three quarters of our new (2012) student group, who started last week. WELCOME TO OUR NEW SPONSORS.
But… we still have 14 students without sponsors
Sponsorship funds ensure that we can keep the Centre running and provide student resources, medical care, teaching resources, salaries for teachers, books, water and electricity. If you know anyone who can help provide an amazing group of disadvantaged young people with the chance of a better life, please pass this message on. Let them know that they will be giving the gift of education, and in doing so enjoy the rewards that being an Umoja sponsor brings! It costs just $35AUD or £18GBP per month. And all they need to do is send us an email.
Students at Umoja!
The view of the mountains from our office.
The typical day of a YCI volunteer in Morogoro starts around 6 or 7AM when the roosters rise and shine. Breakfast is served shortly after, and it’s not uncommon to eat at different times since everyone in the house usually has something different planned for the day.
After breakfast, if we have a meeting planned, we take the daladala (bus) to town or meet our program manager at the office on the way. The daladala is quite a funny experience, almost like sardines packed into a can. Everyone really gets to know each other, and you can feel the sense of community when someone is basically sitting on your lap. The meetings are not usually very long, and don’t ever really start on time. It’s not uncommon for scheduled meetings to change at the last-minute, as the culture here is very easy-going. The meetings consist of a lot of introductions and translation from Swahili to English and vice versa, but it’s interesting to try to guess what everyone is saying, and it’s all a part of the learning experience.
Depending on when the meetings end, we usually grab lunch in town or at home. Today we went to Ricky’s Café in town near the Faraja head office. They serve Western food like burgers and pizza, and have some other tasty options as well. If we go home for lunch, it’s usually served around 12:30-1:00PM and is very delicious Tanzanian food like ugali or pilau, with a side of fresh fruit. When we have the time to go home for lunch, we try to as much as possible.
Ricky's, our favorite stop for a quick bite to eat!
After lunch we make our way back to the office either by foot or on the daladala, and start planning our upcoming workshops and training sessions. Today we worked on getting tests and activities ready for our session with the Girls Club in Chamwino tomorrow. It’s nice to have our own space to work that’s quiet, with an accessible printer and some fans!
We usually walk home from the office after work, and sometimes do some quick shopping for fruits and veggies along the way. Having a few hours before dinner to relax and hang out with our host family is a great way to get to know each other. Dinner is served around 7:00PM, and is followed by either a quiet evening watching the Tanzanian news or playing cards. Since you tend to wake up pretty early, it’s pretty common to want to go to bed around 9:00PM, which still gives you plenty of time to spend with your host family or your fellow volunteers after dinner.
-Andrea Nicholls, Youth Ambassador, Tanzania 2012
Andrea is currently on project in Morogoro, Tanzania. The team arrived in Tanzania in mid-January and will be on project until mid-March. For more information on what the Tanzania teams have been up to, please check out the Tanzania category for more posts.
-Angela Mak, Youth Ambassador, Guyana 2011
This photo essay was created by Angela upon her return to Canada. She spent 5 weeks in Guyana this past fall. YCI is currently recruiting a volunteer team for Guyana departing in July. For more information on what the Guyana teams have been up to, please check out the Guyana category for more posts.
Val at a lookout point in the hills above Port-au-Prince during a project planning trip to Haiti
In the fall of 2008, I volunteered with Youth Challenge International (YCI) on a ten week project in Ghana. My time in Ghana with YCI helped me to fulfill the internship requirements for my postgraduate International Project Management diploma. As a volunteer in Ghana, I helped to write a gender policy manual for YMCA Ghana; I also worked with youth and implemented workshops on subjects such as gender awareness, good citizenship, and HIV/AIDS awareness.
The experiences that stick with me the most from my trip to Ghana are my lunchtime discussions with youth workshop participants. It was most interesting to learn their opinions about the workshop, about YCI, and what they thought was needed to implement a successful workshop and a successful project. They would ask me about what I was doing in Ghana and what my motivations were for doing it. They wanted to know how my volunteer work and YCI’s work would benefit them in the long run. Through these conversations, I learned that youth in Ghana have a vision for their country, and they deeply desire to participate in achieving it.
It is now three and a half years later, and I feel that my experience in Ghana has prepared me well for my current position in Research and Project Development at the Foundation for International Development Assistance (FIDA). FIDA is an organization that works with rural farmers in Haiti to help them improve their own lives and improve food security through agriculture, literacy, and cooperative training. I began volunteering with FIDA just one month before the earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010, and was hired on soon after. My job allows me to do amazing things like writing proposals for new projects, monitoring and coordinating projects in Haiti, and managing the organization’s social media channels. I have had the opportunity to experience Haiti in both an emergency environment and in its very slow but steady recovery.
One of the things that I love most about working with FIDA is their truly participatory approach. This is an organization that understands the desire of Haitians to be heard and to be engaged. In a time when many world leaders are calling for greater participation of Haitians in their own development, FIDA is leading the way. We don’t improve the lives of beneficiaries; we partner with them so they can improve their own lives. This requires us to acknowledge poor Haitian farmers for what they can do, and to listen to what they have to say. This is a lesson that I first learned from those youth workshop participants in Ghana. Now I am part of helping to spread that lesson throughout Haiti. It is now two years after the Haiti earthquake, and through FIDA, I have the opportunity to contribute to rural Haitian farmers improving their own lives and helping the country to feed itself again.
For more information on FIDA, check out our website, Facebook or Twitter by clicking through the links.
-Val Busch, Youth Ambassador, Ghana 2008
This blog was originally posted at www.missadventuresinguyana.wordpress.com.
One of the many fantastic views in Guyana
It has actually arrived. In all my travels, I have always found that the strangest thing was the actual arrival of the time to leave on the trip that I’ve spent so long planning. I was accepted as a YCI volunteer in early August, spent the whole fall fundraising, left Canada early to visit my family in Trinidad, and now the time to leave for Guyana draws near.
I spent my last couple of weeks in Canada shopping for this trip (personal gear, workshop and teaching supplies, house supplies) – the dollar store became my new best friend! I also discovered that some government departments have free documents that you can order from them. For example, I got food guides and nutrition posters from Health Canada. My idea is to use them in a health related workshop, so hopefully we have one 
As I spend the last few days relaxing before I gallivant over to South America, many thoughts have been harassing my poor brain. So, what do I think volunteering in Guyana will be like? Well, it certainly won’t be a walk through a manicured city park, that’s for sure. I expect lots of difficulties and a huge need for patience. I also do not expect to see long term impacts of our contributions but that will just be a lesson in learning to appreciate daily “in the moment” things and achievements. I also think that “adaptation” will be the Sesame Street word of the day, everyday: adapt to heat/humidity, adapt to giant spiders and fish with teeth, adapt to a new culture, adapt to living with three virtual strangers, adapt to being the centre of attention, etc. As an introvert, many of those adaptations will be hard but there are ways to keep my sanity (for example, I will have to find a tree to hide under for some quiet solo time). Another thing that I think will require adaptation is that privacy will be MIA for those three months!!
There are many other things that I expect from this experience. They range from developing the skill to create educational yet engaging workshops to becoming proficient at river bathing. I also expect to learn leadership skills, how to make a yummy paratha, to further develop my photography skills, and to learn how to hand wash laundry in a river.
But in the end, I think it is important to approach overseas volunteering with an open mind and little expectations. Have goals, yes, but keep them a little flexible! I fully expect to learn some of the things I mentioned but also some things that I haven’t even thought of right now! As for fears, my only fear right now is that I’m not sure I brought enough memory cards for my camera.. Seriously. The world may as well end if I run out of memory cards…
-Kendra Seignoret, Youth Ambassador, Guyana 2012
Kendra is a Youth Ambassador who will be arriving in Guyana this Monday. She will be maintaining her blog as best as possible in the field. One of her fundraising initiatives has been to sell her photography online as greeting cards, which you can check out at www.traveltrunkphotography.com . For more information on what the Guyana teams have been up to, please check out the Guyana category for more posts.
Stonetown street activity
I traveled as a volunteer to Zanzibar in January of 2007 and stayed on as a YCI program assistant until April 2008. Sometimes my life in Tanzania feels like a strange dream I had and at other points the memories are so sharp it feels like I might wake up there tomorrow. It has been almost four years (!!!) since I came home from Tanzania and my reflections on the experience shift frequently. I feel like I have more questions about international development than before I left, I wonder and worry about the best models for empowerment, and I struggle with my disconnect from the youth centre where I spent so much time. The experience has, however, defined how I live my life in Canada and strengthened me into someone with much more direction than before.
First of all, I returned with a drive to further my education. We are so blessed in Canada to have such amazing access to learning and I had not internalized that before traveling to Tanzania. Realizing this propelled me into choosing teaching as a career. The confidence I had gained in Tanzania definitely helped me succeed in the U.B.C. teacher education program. I now work as a learning assistance teacher and French teacher and have just started my masters in early literacy, with a focus on multicultural education. I am committed to working with new Canadians, as I remember how scary and isolating it could be in Zanzibar when I couldn’t communicate my wants and needs or showcase my strengths due to language barriers.
Second, I was so moved by the fierce loyalty and sense of community amongst the people I worked with in Zanzibar. The combination of seeing extended families (which seemed to include cousins, neighbours, friends etc.) support one another through life and my own homesickness made me so much more appreciative of the amazing people in my life. I am grateful every day for my family and friends, in a way I wasn’t before I left. Also, my Canadian friends that I volunteered and worked with in Zanzibar are so dear and important to me and are a constant source of inspiration in my life.
While my life for the past four years has been very rooted and settled in Vancouver, I know I am building a new skill set to return to international development in some way. I am vice president of the B.C. council for the International Reading Association and I hope to connect that work to global literacy projects in the future. My most prominent goal is to address the inequalities in education for girls and women.
I miss Zanzibar sunsets, sugar cane juice, and the amazing soup our landlady “Big Mama” sold outside her home. I will never forget the colour of the Indian Ocean under a full moon or watching kids dance at our weekly talent nights. I miss it, but I missed being home more. I am so happy to have lived that life and I know I will go back in some capacity in the future.
-Kate Spence, YCI Youth Ambassador and IYIP Alumni, Tanzania 2007.
Want to learn what other YCI alumni are up to? Check out our blog’s Alumni Update category.
