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Our Poverty Activist team is about to leave to their 6 months service period in Mozambique !!
It is a time of emotions and satisfaction feeling!
In their 5 months of training they got to know better their team mates with whom they will go to the project.
At this moment there are 3 teams, 1 trio and 2 duos, ready to start their service period with all the achievements they have got.
One trio is going to work in DNS Macuze, North Mozambique in Zambezia province.


DNS Macuze started its activities in 2001 with the aim of training teachers for primary education to be an active part of the country’s development, especially in rural areas. Solveig, Oxana and Paola are the trio going to be part of this project.
Ana and Romina are a duo who is going to work with vulnerable girls in Quelimane, also North of Mozambique in a project called Nikhalamo.
Nikhalamo is a project that is reaching 3000 vulnerable girls from 13 to 17 years and children from 3 to 5 years old. The aim of the project is to fight child marriage and empower girls and women by keeping them in the school, for a better future.


The last but not least team going to Mozambique is Abel and Zulima, they will be part of a nutrition project, Food For Knowledge, in Manhica near Maputo.
The project focuses on school feeding, nutrition training and school performance, began in early 2013 in 245 primary schools in Maputo province, and involve more than 65.000 primary school students as well as their parents, teachers, and their community,
The Development Instructors in their last 2 months of training have been preparing, within their project, pedagogical products which will use in their project with communities, students, kids, women’s club, primary schools etc.
At this moment, few days before their departure, the team is preparing and getting ready for their last people’s exam that will include the process of their preparations and the plan of with what they will work with at the project

 

On Monday, eight people from the previous Gaia team became Development Instructors. I am the youngest of those eight. I am Solveig from Estonia and I recently turned twenty. I arrived here in the end of September and am now a part of the February Poverty Activist team. All of us have contrasting aims for coming to England, but mine is probably a bit different from my teammates. I feel like I am not as accomplished as the people in my team. I only finished high school last year and have not really started my life as an adult yet whereas every other individual in my team already has a list of achievements. Volunteering in Africa is not something that I have been planning to do for a long time, but rather something spontaneous I chose to do before I start my university studies.

There are so many amazing volunteering opportunities waiting here in Europe, but if you stop to think about it, they are mostly for personal gain. People volunteer in developed countries to travel and grow as a person. The experiences they bring back are wonderful and lively, but when they look back years later, they often realise that the difference they made for this world is relatively insignificant. I am not naive enough to place my intentions in changing the world. I simply want to touch the people that I am able to reach and I feel like my input can be much more valuable in a place where help is more essential.

This first week has been quite refreshing after four months of site finding for the clothes collection. However, finishing the scholarship programme does not mean that I have unlimited free time every single day. The whole team chose different responsibility areas in the campus. Most of us chose two, for example, I chose to be in charge of accommodation and cleaning. Living in a community means that we keep our home clean so every morning after breakfast I prepare a cleaning action. This means that every person in my team of eight collectively makes sure that commonly used areas are cleaned. Being in charge of accommodation means that when a new person comes to our school, I prepare their room so that they feel at home when they arrive.

The responsibility areas which I chose are only a minuscule part of what we call community life here in CICD. There are numerous other areas which need to be taken care of. Being responsible for an area does not mean that you have to take care of it alone. Everyone in the community is here to help and support you and this is what I really like about living in a community. However, mobilizing people to do chores or attend lessons can sometimes be burdensome and frustrating, because we all come from different cultures. If being regularly late is unquestionably normal for some, it can really annoy people who are used to punctuality.
Besides responsibility areas my team also chose projects to work on here in the College. On my first day as a Development Instructor, we toured the campus in order to choose a project which can enhance the campus, but also help us learn skills for our projects in Africa. My team went as far as to choose three projects: setting up an electric fence for sheep, constructing vertical gardens and building a chicken coop. All of these projects should be completed by the end of July, which I believe can definitely be accomplished.

Other than that we have had numerous presentations this first week. The topics include team-building, community as a concept, world scale stewardship and project experience. It is amazing how you can never get tired of project presentations. Each time you see a presentation from Mozambique or Zambia, you still learn something new. It all makes me wonder what my experience is going to be like.
Although we do not always have free time on our hands, we still do have a significant amount of it. What I really love about my team is its diversity. Each of us have something to teach to the others so we decided to become teachers for each other. One of us became a personal trainer, the other a guitar teacher and we also do improvisational theatre as well as singing. This has helped us all understand how much we all have to offer and how to spend your free time productively. In the meantime we get to know the strengths and weaknesses of each team member.

All in all after finishing my Gaia period, I really feel like I have grown as a person and that becoming a Development Instructor is a new page in the book. Personally, I am profoundly motivated to make the most of this new chapter so that I am prepared for whatever comes next.

Solveig Joanna Niitra

 

By Zsolt Gyarmati, Hungary, Fighting with The Poor 21 months programme

Earlier I had a decent job in the capital of Hungary, I rented an apartment, had a car, had friends and all the “normal” stuff. However I wasn’t satisfied with my life. So I decided to change my life maybe not permanently, but entirely. I wanted to do something meaningful in this rushing and money-centered world. My goal now is to make other people’s life better. If I can make only one single life better, I will be really happy. So I decided to go on a journey and become a Development Instructor in Africa.
Humana People to People has been involved for several decades now in various long-term development projects in numerous developing countries, such as Zambia. The areas of these projects are education, rural and community development, agriculture, health, HIV/AIDS prevention and care, support of orphans and vulnerable children, economic development and environmental conservation. Just to have an idea of the influence of Humana’s activity, in 2015 the projects in Zambia were reaching over 700.000 people in 30 districts.

Volunteer with School Children

Volunteer with School Children

Serving Porridge In The School

Serving Porridge In The School

Waiting for porridge

Waiting for porridge


Since earlier I was studying to be a teacher, it wasn’t really surprising that I chose to volunteer at a project which involves children, namely Children’s Town. Life in not easy for orphans and vulnerable children in our western culture, and it is not any better in Zambia either. Children’s Town offers home and basic education from pre-school age to ninth grade for former street kids, who otherwise don't have much hope for better conditions in life. The project also fuctions as a normal school for the local children living in the neighboring villages and communities. The project has many supporters, and since the curriculum is based on the Zambian Ministry of Education’s guidelines, the children will have good chances in their later life. The programme was launched in 1992 and since more than 1400 kids benefited from it.
I hope with my work I can be a part of this programme and it’s community, hopefully I can contribute to the kids’ education. Maybe I can even provide them a brief overview of life in other countries. I also hope that I can teach them science at some level, since that was what I was studying myself earlier in college. I’d like to see the spark lighting up in kids’ eyes when they understand or discover something.
Working in the local communities will likely be part of my work as well. I’d like to understand their lives and struggles, enthusiasms and fears in order to be able to be of real help. I really don’t want them to copy the European life style or mine for instance, but rather to find their own way.