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The entire team here at Youth Challenge International is very excited to announce our inaugural charity climb fundraiser event: The Kilimanjaro Climb to Give Thanks.
This event will take place over Canadian Thanksgiving from October 12 – 19, 2013, and has been organized with the goal of raising $100,000 for YCI’s youth development programs.
We’re proud to offer the opportunity for up to 30 individuals to travel with us to The Republic of Tanzania where they will trek the 5,895m up Mt. Kilimanjaro to reach the summit, Uhuru Peak. As Africa’s highest mountain and the highest freestanding mountain in the world, Mt. Kilimanjaro offers a great challenge for climbers and a unique opportunity for YCI to raise awareness about our youth development programs.
YCI believes that young people have a central role to play in their development and directly engages youth in creating solutions to the challenges they face. Currently, we have youth development projects in four different locations throughout Tanzania, and we continually recruit talented Canadian and international youth volunteers to collaborate in partnership with the local youth in these locations to achieve innovation and development results. Last year, our volunteers reached over 5,600 youth in Tanzania, providing access to valuable resources and education to support improved access to livelihoods, health, and leadership opportunities.
Bryan Cox, YCI’s Executive Director, is excited to offer any individuals with a passion for adventure and philanthropy the opportunity to participate in this remarkable event. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity that will help change young peoples lives. “After working with young people for the past five years I have found that young people want one thing; the opportunity and the tools to succeed, not a handout”. Bryan said “I am looking forward to leading this challenge with committed people from across our global community”.
To find out more about the YCI Kilimanjaro Climb to Give Thanks, visit
http://bit.ly/YCIkili
or contact Robin Way at specialprojects@yci.org. Or join our Kilimanjaro Climb event page on Facebook!
We have exciting news! There has never been a better time to volunteer for the first time and fall for a new place.
YCI is pleased to announce we are offering 10 Scholarships for our October Projects! We are looking to award 10 exceptional youth (18 – 35) with either a $1,700 scholarship towards participation in our 8-week volunteer placement in Tanzania or a $1,000 scholarship towards participation in our 4-week volunteer placement in Costa Rica. The scholarships are intended to provide young leaders with the opportunity to turn positive civic involvement into global action.
Eligibility criteria:
• Applicants must be between 18 and 35 years of age
• Applicants must be applying for one of YCI’s autumn programs
• Only first-time applicants, currently not already registered on a program, will be considered
• Scholarships must be used towards the Tanzania or the Costa Rica program
For more information on applying for the Tanzania or Costa Rica Scholarships, click HERE. Scholarships will be awarded to suitable candidates on a rolling basis, so don’t delay!
Apply Today!
It seems like only 299 posts ago we started this blog, and now look at us, posting for the 300th time. While sitting around the office wondering how to commemorate this moment, we came up with many possibilities. How does one celebrate 300? It is not really a Diamond Jubilee or a Ruby Anniversary. We considered a top 300 list, but that seemed a little long. We also considered renting the movie 300 and having an office viewing party; but since we started this blog, Blockbuster has gone out of business. We decided instead to use this opportunity to look back and remind ourselves of truly great moments in YCI Blog history.
Our First Blog Post
Our first post went up on June, 21st of 2007. Back then we truly believed less is more. Click HERE to see our very first, very profound blog post. (You could also still be the first person to like that post!) Since then we have grown substantially in readership and contributors (over 200!). In 2007, only 342 people visited our blog. In the first 5 months of this year we have had almost 20,000 viewers.
Brushes With Royalty
Our volunteers have had two occasions to meet royalty (or their representatives in Canada) that we have featured on this blog. One of our volunteers, Stephanie Bray attended the Celebration of Youth and the Spirit of Volunteerism along with Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Click HERE for her blog post about the event. Danny Richmond also had the chance to meet the Governor General. This one we caught on video:
Our Blogs With The Most…
Over time on a blog you can collect some really important statistics and if not really important, at least stats you can share. So here goes.
Most Views in a Month: April 2012
Most Talked About Blog: Culture Shock by David Caughey
Most Prolific Blogger: Lisa D’Alimonte. Lisa has contributed to or written 7 blogs for us while participating in 3 different YCI programs. Click HERE to see her in action.
Most Common Tag Word to Find Our Blog: Africa, followed closely by Tanzania
Most Views By Country: Canada and the United States, but a couple interesting countries on our top ten list are India and the Netherlands. In case we have not said it already already, thank you for your support and keep reading!
Most Viewed Single Post: Nolan’s Blog: Ghana by Nolan Boehm
Best Photo On Our Blog
The best photo on our blog was voted on by an esteemed committee of office staff. Though THIS photo got a few votes (ok maybe just one), we decided to showcase a historical photo. Check out this gem taken in 1990 and featured on this blog on May 26th, 2010.
Guyanese and Canadian volunteers (or “Challengers,” as they were known in 1990) pose in front of Kawall Primary School, in Region 3 of Guyana. The renovation project was completed in September of 1990 by Youth Challenge International volunteers.
And Last But Certainly Not Least
We want to thank everyone who reads our blog regularly, as well as those who just pop by from time to time to see what’s new. Our blog has been a great way to share YCI stories and successes. Over the coming year, we will bring you more updates on volunteers, alumni, beneficiaries, partners and champions of YCI. We hope you all continue to read, post after post, for the next 300 entries!
To end off this commemorative blog post, we wanted to share with you a photo we have tried to find a reason to share for 299 posts. We leave you with this. Happy 300th!
Our Executive Director, Bryan Cox. A dashing young lad, clearly destined for greatness.
-We have had a great time over the past 300 blogs. Tell us, what was your favourite blog post!
This blog post was originally posted on A Street in a Strange World, which is the blog of our IYIP in Uganda, Mariah Griffin-Angus. For the complete post, please click HERE.
The corner of Kampala Street in Kampala.
Life in Kampala is pretty good. It’s beautiful, with excellent restaurants and friendly people. I can get most things I need at the supermarkets or local shops. Armed robberies, so prevalent in Cape Town and Nairobi, are rare here. The only real downside? The constant power outages and poor infrastructure.
It always happens at the most annoying of times. When you’re sitting down for dinner. Or maybe you’re researching a project online. Then, poof, lights go out. No power. It always sparks a few curses, a scramble for lanterns and flashlights, and a hope that it’ll come back on soon. Sometimes it does; sometimes it will be hours.
‘Load-shedding’, as power cuts are known in Uganda, is frequent. If my neighborhood has power, it is likely another neighborhood somewhere else does not. Last Thursday, the power was out almost all day, returning around 4:30 and cutting off again at 6:30. It’s strange planning the day around power outages. I keep my laptop plugged in all the time so I have reserve battery power. I keep a flashlight in my bag at all times. There are lanterns in every room at my house. Our stove is gas so we can still cook dinner. Even still, there’s something strange about an evening without power.
When I stand on my porch, with the only light coming from the flickering lantern, the city, for once, seems so very quiet. Even the yelping dogs, the roosters, the cats, the cows, they all go silent. The air will often feel cool, a welcome change from the blistering heat of the midday. Sometimes, I see the lights from the cars driving down the bypass. I pull on my hoodie, grab my ipod and sit outside, enjoying the solitude. It’s a rare moment of peace and it’s something I’ve come to enjoy.
Yet my experience is very different from most Ugandans. A significant percent of the population live in poverty. Some places, like Moroto in northeastern Uganda, just got power last year and even then, it’s only for a few hours in the evening. Only 3-5% of the population has regular access to electricity. The busy night markets in Kampala are usually lit up by lanterns and candles rather than fluorescent lights. The few shops that are connected to the electrical grid make extra money by offering a place for people to charge their cell phones.
But lack of electricity is more than just an inconvenience; it’s symptomatic of larger problems: the rising cost of living, unreliable infrastructure and high unemployment. While large malls and expensive resorts have backup generators, most businesses cannot afford this. Many offices, my own included, face problems when the computers shut down. How can people develop a country or run a business when they cannot depend on the infrastructure?
Not only is load-shedding frequent, but electricity is also very expensive. In our house, for instance, our electricity bill doubled over the last month for no apparent reason. If a house full of decently employed people struggle with their bills, then what about the people who don’t make that much money? Solar power is also prohibitively expensive, as we discovered when my landlord looked into getting solar power for our house. Living on the equator, I can’t help but think how revolutionary solar power could be if it was cheap and accessible.
For countries to develop, they need infrastructure: accessible roads, electricity, a communications system and functional governments. If there is no power, restaurants can’t cook food; students can’t type up their homework; businesses can’t connect to colleagues internationally. More crucially, many hospitals are forced to operate by torchlight or by the light of cell phones. For mothers facing complications during labour or for the person facing amputation from a road injury, the operation becomes much more dangerous. Over 150 people have died in the past six months at the Jinja Referral Hospital (about an hour outside of Kampala) because of power outages. Children in intensive care, patients who need assistance breathing, or those who need blood transfusions, are all in danger when the power goes out.
The Daily Monitor, the ‘reform’ newspaper, has labeled this state of discontent “Uganda’s national despair”. In December 2011, there were riots in Kampala over the frequent power outages and since the election last year, the opposition leaders have led ‘walk to work’ protests against the rising cost of living. As Reuters points out, Uganda is the third largest economy in East Africa but this growth can’t continue with such poor infrastructure. In the Reuters article, Asaf Kulumbano, a sheet metal worker, says he doesn’t make any money if there’s no power. His children will go hungry.
Clearly the government will have to address these concerns very soon. As the cost of living in Uganda keeps increasing, people are becoming increasingly frustrated. Food costs have increased, along with fuel. When the GDP per capita is $1,300 USD (Uganda ranks 209/226 countries in terms of GDP per capita), every penny counts. People pay more for the services yet see poor hospitals, terrible roads and lack of electricity.
The government is promising more reliable electricity, but whether this will be enough remains to be seen. For now, I am both relieved and uncomfortable that power outages are just an inconvenience for me, not a matter of life and death as it is for so many Ugandans.
The Owino Market in Kampala. This market is one of the largest in the continent and is believed to have more than 50 000 vendors.
- Mariah Griffin-Angus, Governance Project Officer, CIDA International Youth Internship Program, Uganda 2012
The deadline to donate Aeroplan Miles to YCI is fast approaching. If you have not already donated you have until March 4th to send in your pledge form. So far we have gotten a lot of support from out Board Members, both through personal donations and through their networks, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank them. YCI volunteers and Board Members Stephen Brown and Daniel Abichandani were able to raise over 200,000 Aeroplan Miles at Deloitte on Friday February 17th. We hope to be just as successful when we visit KPMG on March 1st with the support of our Board Member, Paritosh Gambhir. This past week, Paritosh was able to raise 100,000 miles in 24 hours!
Please take some time this weekend to Help YCI Go the Extra MIle!
Why Donate?
- You feel like spreading some goodwill
- You want to use your Aeroplan Miles to fund meaningful travel to support youth development projects
- You want to help youth
- You believe that young people have a meaning contribution to make to international development
What are you going to do with my Miles?
Donated Aeroplan Miles will be used for staff travel to partner locations in order to implement ongoing monitoring and evaluation activities. YCI will also use Aeroplan Miles to enable outstanding young volunteers to travel overseas to donate their time to help build communities and leaders through global youth development.
Click HERE to get your Charitable Pooling Pledge Form now!
We want to send a big thank you to Lindsay Page and Daniel Abichandani for giving the first two donations to our Go the Extra mile Campaign! They generously donated their Aeroplan Miles to YCI this week.
You too can donate your Aeroplan Miles to YCI in the coming weeks. To assist you in doing so, we here at the office have made a simple ‘how to’ video to guide you through the process. Please enjoy our film debut!
Youth Challenge International (YCI) has recently been accepted into the Aeroplan Charitable Pooling Program, wherein YCI can actively solicit Aeroplan Mile donations for a one-month period each calendar year. Help YCI go the extra mile! Given YCI’s commitment to achieving meaningful development results, YCI will launch our first ever Aeroplan Mile Recruitment Drive as part of the Charitable Pooling Program to correspond with International Development Week, which commences on February 6th. YCI will solicit Aeroplan donations from February 6th to March 4th, 2012.
Youth Challenge International has a long tradition of promoting youth innovation to drive positive change. Building on over 20 years of experience, YCI programs are designed to meet the needs of youth affected by poverty through four integrated sectors: livelihoods, health, leadership and the environment.
YCI’s dedicated youth volunteers implement substantive youth development programs in coordination with local youth and partner organizations in Ghana, Tanzania, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Guyana. More than 31,000 hours were contributed by volunteers to global development programs last year and more than 10,000 young people directly benefited from YCI programs.
Why Donate?
- You feel like spreading some goodwill
- You want to use your Aeroplan Miles to fund meaningful travel to support youth development projects
- You want to help youth
- You believe that young people have a meaning contribution to make to international development
What are you going to do with my Miles?
Donated Aeroplan Miles will be used for staff travel to partner locations in order to implement ongoing monitoring and evaluation activities. YCI will also use Aeroplan Miles to enable outstanding young volunteers to travel overseas to donate their time to help build communities and leaders through global youth development.
Click HERE to get your Charitable Pooling Pledge Form now!
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.
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
Sagal recently joined YCI as a Program Coordinator and is excited to be working with all of the amazing volunteers and staff. She is especially excited to be working at YCI as she was a YCI volunteer in Costa Rica in 2005! Before joining us in the Toronto office, Sagal worked as a Program Coordinator for the Canadian Red Cross and with the YMCA’s Newcomer Youth Leadership program, in an effort to support their settlement experiences. Most recently, Sagal worked in Sierra Leone with Street Kids International and Hands Empowering the Less Privileged in Sierra Leone, supporting youth livelihoods projects aimed at facilitating opportunities for young people to become more economically sustained through micro enterprise development.
Sagal Abdulle
What does your job at YCI involve?
As a Program Coordinator at YCI, I support the growth and sustainability of some great projects. I get to work with really great people while facilitating opportunities for young people to engage in international volunteer and internship opportunities.
How did you get involved with YCI?
I became involved with YCI in 2005 as a Volunteer in Costa Rica. As a YCI program volunteer, I had the opportunity to live with and learn from some really wonderful people. This experience played a great role in cultivating my continued interest in youth development. I will always remember this experience but my fondest memory is of the incredible mayonnaise my group leader made for us, this was by far the best mayonnaise I have ever had! I kid you not!
What motivates you?
I am motivated by humanity!
What issue concerns you most?
I am most concerned about issues of youth marginalization and disengagement both locally and globally. I am inspired by the resilience of youth and believe that an informed, empowered and more understanding youth population will lead to a more peaceful world! I am also deeply invested in issues of conflict and peacebuilding and seek to contribute to fostering understanding amongst individuals in conflict situations.
What else do you do?
I like to sing and dance and usually draw the attention of innocent bystanders who become my unintentional audience! I also enjoy reading, learning and am a devoted fan of both the NFL and NBA.
