Half Way...

(Middle Street!)

So it’s half-way through the program and I know I keep saying it, but I’ll say it again…time flies! Really, we have done so much in the past three months that it’s been difficult to keep a proper journal on a daily basis. We wrote our midway evaluation reports this week and have had a midway evaluation meeting, which has been a great way to reflect on what we’ve done and learnt so far and to plan what we still need to work on or improve.
In the past three months we have had various courses and have carried out fundraising and community activities. We have had courses on, for example, African History, on Latin America and the Caribbean History, on HIV and AIDS and on Current Development issues. We have worked on assignments individually and in groups with special focus on presentation methods and skills. The group assignments have been great training for me since I usually work best alone and can manage my own time, but in a group it is about cooperation, motivation, patience, division of tasks and much more which are great skills to learn and I think I have managed well so far ; ) It is particularly interesting for me to work in teams because I am not so creative so I can learn a lot from others, and anyway two minds is greater than one, usually! ; ) We have also had individual evaluation ‘tests’ once a week which included questions related to courses as well as experiences, for example on fundraising activities we’ve carried out. These weekly evaluations have been a great help for me to reflect on the past weeks, especially on what I have learnt.
For community work, I have been involved in the Mini TCE project, as mentioned in an earlier posting, in a nearby community. It has been great training and preparation for the TCE project which I will go to in South Africa. It has been wonderful to get a chance to talk to locals and people have been very responsive despite that we appear in their homes when they might be busy or resting. We usually go on Saturdays, which is a good day as most people are at home and we have more time to cover different areas. It’s really good exercise too: Walking to the village in the morning for just over an hour (up a steep hill!), walking house to house all day, and walking back in the evening. What we normally do during these visits is: Informing about the HIV and AIDS community work of our school; Generally informing about HIV and AIDS, transmission, prevention, etc; Informing on statistics (in the world and in St Vincent) and on social implications, especially stigmatization; Informing about testing methods and testing clinics in nearby hospitals; Distributing FAQ booklets, condoms, leaflets (and demonstrations) on proper condom use.
Regarding fundraising, I did expect fundraising to be difficult in St Vincent. After all it is a poor country as well. The biggest challenge for us as a team has been following previous teams who have done the same thing in such a small place. I did expect that I needed to be creative and innovative in terms of fundraising, but it has been more challenging that I expected. I thought that we would be able to continue a lot of the activities carried out by the previous teams, but this has proven very difficult because we are approaching the same people previous teams approached and we are having to explain and re-justify our cause. But I think we have done a great job so far despite the difficulties. I have tried to be involved in as many fundraising activities as possible to not only keep my motivation through variety, but especially to gain experience in different fundraising activities. I have done some street fundraising, door to door visits, contacting businesses for donations and sponsorships, selling second-hand clothes and shoes and requesting for needed material donations from here and abroad. I have also personally contributed to our fundraising by selling Kenyan traditional jewelry which a very special person sent over to me from Kenya (can't thank you enough!!). In the next period we really need to organise the fundraising better and we need to work on the new ideas that we have, for example, organising a raffle and bingo events. I have already been involved in the initial preparations for the raffle and I will assist in everything else! (we are still looking for donations of prizes for these events…hint hint, e.g. a cell phone).
In the next period we will also specialize more in preparation for our projects in Africa and also start to draw up a work plan together with our project leaders (via remote contact). We will carry out more specific assignments related to our projects. We have a database with lots of assignments, theoretical as well as practical. For example, I already completed an assignment on AIDS orphans in South Africa, looking at the statistics and social problems such as stigmatization. I’m carrying out this kind of research in advance to learn more about the situation of HIV and AIDS in South Africa since that is what I am going to work on in the TCE project. I will also learn to give classes/courses on this topic.
Overall I have had a great experience in the last three months. I have met lovely people at the program and in the communities. I’m looking forward to the next period of training and to new experiences. Personally I need to improve some things such as people-mobilization skills (it’s easy with kids, more difficult with adults!). As a team we need to work on better organization and planning of activities and to improve internal communication (sounds like any team in any organization right??)
Ok, I’ll keep you posted : )
HUGS!