South Africa and TCE it is!

Hi all! I hope you have been following the updates on the school’s site, you’ll see that we are really getting on with the community work. As mentioned in my earlier post, we’ve already started with community work in the neighbouring villages and I am involved with the HIV/AIDS education activities. I got involved with this community activity because I was already interested in learning more about HIV/AIDS and working in the related projects of Humana. In the meantime we've received the available projects and positions, have studied them and have made our choices! So I decided to go to South Africa because they offered a very interesting HIV/AIDS project called “Total Control of the Epidemic” (TCE), an awareness and prevention programme which has a more practical approach to the fight against the epidemic. I will tell you more about it later but in the meantime you can read an overview on the Humana website if you like: http://www.humana.org/TextPage.asp?MenuItemID=48&SubMenuItemID=116
I’m actually the only one from my team going to South Africa, but I will be working with other Development Instructors (DI’s) from other DI schools so it’s an opportunity to meet other volunteers. My other team mates are going to Malawi and Mozambique, to projects such as Teacher Training Colleges, Child Aid, Farmer’s Club and also TCE.
From now on we will be training more specifically for our projects. We’ll still be working as a team, but we will have additional individual assignments related to our projects, for example I just completed a research assignment looking into the problem of AIDS orphans in South Africa, especially the stigma they face, and what is being done and what more can be done to support these increasing numbers of orphans. FYI, there were estimated to be around 1 200, 000 AIDS orphans in South Africa in 2005 (UNAIDS). There are many more unimaginable figures which you just wouldn’t believe (just Google)! It’s good to know that I will soon be doing something, anything! about the desperate situations of affected people, but for now I have to learn a lot. I’m already getting a lot of training through the “Mini-TCE” activities which we are carrying out over here as part of the community work. This involves going door-to-door providing information to people about HIV/AIDS and explaining the importance of getting tested and where and how they can get tested, distributing free condoms and providing proper condom-use demonstrations. In the beginning it was quite difficult because we were not sure how to approach and speak to people or how people will respond, but people here are quite open to talk about HIV/AIDS and are very grateful for the work we are doing.
It is great to be doing something for the community and learning a great deal from it. The activities in the communities really bring us closer to the people, although people are very open and friendly here anyway and it is easy to chat to anyone on the street.
For now, it’s about time for a break :-) We have this weekend off (normally we only have one day in the week off). We’ll be going down to the Grenadines for some sun! It has actually been raining a lot on the main island, more than usual for the dry season and we are not getting as much sun as usual, but it’s still warm ;-) so no complaints. Then it’s back to another week of fundraising next week (yey!).
Take care all.

Even more greenery!

Visit to waterfalls on my free day. Enjoy the pics.

More Learning...

Ok, so the first fundraising week is over and we did not reach our target for the week :( but we are not too far behind and there are still ongoing activities until the next fundraising period. Some of the ongoing activities are garage sales and sponsorship letters and of course home donations. The last few days have been more theoretical – we’ve been studying African and Caribbean history and current poverty issues. We’ve been practicing presentations skills – mostly without the computer because there will rarely be any electricity or equipment such as projectors at the projects we’re going to. A lot of us have little experience with giving presentations or public speaking and those who do have some experience are used to using programs like PowerPoint. So now we all have to learn to be more creative in presenting and later we will be preparing and giving whole courses. After all, we are training to become ‘instructors’ and most of the projects involve educating people so in addition to the knowledge we are getting, the sharing of the knowledge is also important to be done as efficiently as possible. The multicultural environment we are living in with people having different levels of the English language is great training for the volunteer work later on. In the projects we go to, we will be working with rural people who mostly don’t speak the national language (for example, English in Malawi and South Africa and Portuguese in Mozambique). So even though some of us are already learning Portuguese or improving their English depending on the countries they are interested in going to, we will all have to learn a local language wherever we go. Apart from the theoretical work, we’ve also been preparing the community work for the neighbouring communities. The previous teams already started some outreach activities such as computer classes, HIV/AIDS education, sports for kids and recreational activities with handicapped kids, which we are continuing, but we are also starting up new activities which people in the community have told us they are interested in, such as a women’s club and art club for kids. We will be doing community work on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons and all day Saturday. It takes a lot of time as we have to walk around everywhere. I will be more involved with the HIV/AIDS education which includes going door to door talking to people and trying to answer any questions they have as well as trying to get more people to get tested and informing them about the clinics they can go to and distributing condoms while encouraging safe sex. Other activities include sexual education courses at schools (more like supporting the ones that are already provided) and working in partnership with various institutes and organizations to raise awareness and to provide material such as condoms and information material as well testing resources. I have already visited a village and was amazed at how people are really interested and willing to get involved in the various activities as well as to cooperate with the HIV/AIDS education. Even when we have woken someone from their afternoon nap, or afternoon baking, no one was annoyed at us (I would probably be annoyed if I was awoken from my nap for a bunch of volunteers asking silly questions! ;) Anyway I do want to make it clear though that we are doing the community work because there is an interest for it in the community and not because we are using the community to get some training for Africa! It is great training no doubt – it’s the situation of ‘killing two birds with one stone’ ;)
Alright, I’ll try write again soon. For now, wishing you all well!