A history of inadvertent asset stripping

“When I was young our village had plenty of water,” recalls Emanuel Lado. “There were lots of springs. Unfortunately, most of them have dried up.”

Like most inhabitants of Flores, one of the Lesser Sunda Islands of the Indonesian archipelago, Emanuel is a farmer. He has a small rice paddy in the province of Nagekeo and cultivates peanuts, bananas, and potatoes for subsistence. Over the years, many poor farmers have turned to planting subsistence crops rather than tending trees on their land. Today, the hills show signs of erosion, the dam in the lower land is filled with silt, and landslides have become a growing problem.

Seizing the initiative

But it’s not all bad news. “Now we are starting to plant trees back, since Jess came to our village and taught us about natural law,” says Emanuel. “He told us that if we make terraces, we could control erosion. Trees will also hold rainwater, so it will not come down in floods, turning our fertile land into wasted rocks.”

Jesus “Jess” Amarilla is a VSO volunteer at the Agriculture Office of the provincial government in Flores. The 51-year-old is a capacity builder who works closely with Marcelinus Yustinus Depa, nicknamed Nus, from the same department. When Jess arrived, he found Nus struggling to engage local communities with government plans to rehabilitate the environment. Nus says, “At Jess’s suggestion we went back to review these plans with the villagers themselves, which was a success.”

A blueprint for sustainable development

To enable the community to manage watershed sustainability, a forum – FORPELDAS – was set up in 2004 by VSO, regional government, the Department of Agriculture, and local and international NGOs. The forum consists of representatives from 17 villages in Nagekeo, each with its own village-level plan, as well as inter-village plans. “The farmers needed to change drastically,” says Jess. “They had to plant trees in the upland and build terraces with plants instead of stone.”

It is Jess’s keen interest in cultural diversity that drives him to share his skills with others. “I like to compare how we work in the Philippines with the techniques used in other countries,” he says. “For example, in my placement here, we adapted terrace-building techniques used at home with expertise from my counterpart Nus about the methods of Indonesia.”

A longtime farmer, Jess became a VSO volunteer a couple of years ago. “Working for a government organisation can be bureaucratic and Indonesian culture is different to what I’m used to, but we’re seeing results and I’m very content with the way the people in the forum are making a tangible difference.”

Ambitious plans, significant obstacles

More than thirty years after the genocidal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, parts of Cambodia have yet to recover. Sokun Chab, deputy director of education in Maung Russey – a district in the Battambang province of northwestern Cambodia – laments the state of primary education, among other things. She says, “Thirty percent of 6 year-olds are not enrolled in the first class of primary school. Without any intervention, they might never start school.”

Poverty is the main reason many children do not attend school. Instead, they work with their parents at the market or in the rice paddies; sell merchandise to tourists; collect garbage; or work with cattle. Most of the parents in Maung Russey are illiterate and so do not appreciate the value of education.

To attract more children and to improve the quality of the education system, the government’s ‘child-friendly schools’ scheme sets high standards and places children at the heart of a teaching process that encourages them to think creatively and develop analytical skills.

Striving for change

An ambitious programme has been made more challenging by the stark shortage of teachers in Cambodia’s more remote areas. This was the situation faced by VSO volunteer Maria “Remy” Anigbogu, a 45-year-old district education officer with a background in psychology and administration, when she arrived to assist Sokun with the implementation of child-friendly schools.

“At first Cambodia was a bit difficult,” says Remy. “When I started, I wanted them to create their vision, mission and goals for the schools quickly, but they waited. It seemed that they had some distrust for new things. It is in their culture; Cambodians have been through a very terrible war.”

But when one school started, the others followed suit and Remy learned the value of patience. “I integrated with the people, but I also mingled with all the other VSO volunteers from different countries. This has made me more open-minded. I learned how to appreciate other ways of doing things.”

The rewards of patience

Sokun welcomes Remy’s ideas: “Remy networked with another NGO that gave us books, so we have set up a library in the schools.” Remy also suggested that they meet with the community to discuss the value of education, and the roles and responsibilities of teachers, children, and parents. This has helped change attitudes, leading to an increase in the number of children attending school in the region.

Looking back on the experience, Remy says, “Consulting in this district with 95 schools has been very rewarding. I trained the staff to become facilitators and provided workshops for the school directors in leadership, management, and teambuilding. After some time, I stepped back. It was good to see that they then advised themselves and I simply offered support. I always tried to put a bit of gender sensitivity into the training, since Cambodia is a very patriarchal country. There are few women directors. That is why I am very proud of Sokun.”

George has never known life without HIV. Born HIV positive in the sprawling city of Nairobi, he was orphaned in his teenage years along with his siblings, when their mother died of AIDS. Since then, VSO partner Women Fighting AIDS in Kenya (WOFAK) has played a vital role in the life of George and his siblings. WOFAK has part-paid their school fees, providing them with text books and uniforms, and feeding them a nutritious meal every weekday. 

WOFAK – A lifeline for George

Now 26-years-old, George confidently declares how much he has benefitted from WOFAK, “I would not have been able to complete school after my mother died”, he says.  But it’s WOFAK’s vocational training programme that has helped him the most as he transitioned from his teenage years into adulthood.

After completing a six month diploma in hairdressing, George was awarded funding to complete a six month diploma in beauty.  He took a three-month teaching course and now trains hair and beauty therapy students full-time.  His HIV status means he frequently gets sick so the low-intensity work that teaching hairdressing and beauty demands suits his needs well.

WOFAK pays for 20 HIV orphans a year, aged 16-25, to complete a course in vocational training.  Skills’ training ranges from hairdressing and tailoring to mechanics and takes between six months and one year, equipping vulnerable young people with basic skills to earn and support themselves and their families. 

How VSO supports WOFAK

Setting up a Monitoring and Evaluation system across the organisation, VSO volunteer Aurelia Valota plays a critical role ensuring that funding continues to filter through to Kenya’s most vulnerable youth. 
WOFAK carries out myriad activities across its seven offices, from organising group therapy sessions in city prisons to providing food baskets to grandmother-headed households in remote and impoverished parts of the country. But documenting the impact WOFAK has on the lives of AIDs victims has always posed a challenge.

In a climate of decreasing funding, donors are demanding more evidence now than ever, before releasing funds.  With the critical assistance and expertise of Aurelia - WOFAK is now able to prove to donors that their work is an important lifeline to thousands of others like George, in Kenya’s poorest communities.

Brighter future orphans living with HIV 

Even though George now supports himself without the ongoing help of WOFAK, he still spends most of his spare time at a district office and represents WOFAK’s youth wing as chairman. His dream now is to open an orphanage; “I want other orphans to feel they have a home and people to take care of them, like I found with WOFAK.” 

Sierra Leone emerged out of civil war ten years ago, but the aftermath has brought little hope for future generations in a country that has seen brutal conflict in recent years.

Jennifer’s parents were told they would never see their daughter again when she was aggressively attacked and snatched by soldiers at the age of eighteen. 

After trying to escape twice, she was stabbed, beaten – and issued with a death threat if she attempted to escape again.  Jennifer endured two years living a life of enforced servitude and was raped several times by her captors. It was only following the disarmament in 1999, that she made her way back home, now a single mother of two children.

Nevertheless she returned back to school, juggling responsibilities of motherhood with her school subjects, until the next misfortune found its way into Jennifer’s life.

“I was selling at the junction when I felt something fall inside my left eye...I went to Freetown to get my eyes treated but they told me I had a cornea scar and could not operate... I have never been able to see again.”

Earning a living

It was at this desperate moment in Jennifer’s life that she discovered VSO partner organisation, Binkolo Growth Centre, an employment and skills centre nearby that was assisting people with disabilities to find work.  Here she was provided with a small grant as start-up capital for a small business.

VSO volunteer Mabel Sengendo trained Jennifer in business management and marketing skills, giving her merchandising advice. Mabel spent a year at Binkolo Growth Centre helping to train staff, improve systems and develop a marketing strategy for the organisation. Recognising the additional challenges faced by disabled vulnerable young victims of war, she worked on a funding proposal for training and grants to benefit more disabled youths, like Jennifer.

Jennifer now sells commodities such as palm oil, cola nuts and rice.

“The business is helping me greatly – in the past I couldn’t afford money to buy soap but now I can buy soap, clothes, and shoes for my children as well as afford school fees – because I’m buying seasonal business.”

Promising future

Jennifer now buys palm oil or rice when prices drop, preserves it, and sells it on when the cost of these products goes up. The business has presented Jennifer with previously unknown opportunities, but she is still fixed on recouping the education she never completed.

“My dream before 2013 is for my business to grow in such a way that enables me to return to school... there is a blind school close to Binkolo that I would love to attend.”

Though Jennifer faces the additional challenge of adapting to life with a disability, her personal journey is not unlike many other young people affected by the war in Sierra Leone. In addition to supporting small businesses, VSO partner Binkolo Growth Centre offers blacksmith and carpentry training to desperate youths unable to earn a living. With the expertise and input of volunteers like Mabel, it is creating previously unimaginable livelihood opportunities for a young and unemployed population in a land of lingering hope.  

Involving the community is crucial for education in Ghana

There’s a wealth of challenges that face the development of education in Ghana, and the Government doesn’t have the funds to deal with them all. For this reason it’s important that the community rally round and do what they can to support the development of their local schools. Communities have been known to develop school farms so they can provide meals so children are more energised towards learning. Parents and teachers come together and pool funds to buy extra school furniture or provide manpower to build quarters. Education becomes collaboration between the school and the community, so everyone feels responsible. Often, when children see their parents’ involvement, they become more motivated.

Cultural barriers to children going to school

We also have a lot of cultural challenges, which means girls are not always able to go to school because of requirements in the home and the community. We need parents to understand that girls have a right to be educated and if they are they can make a contribution to the development of the whole of Ghana. 

I network with a range of organisations and individuals – from district authorities to elected community leaders – who are in a position to help parents recognise the importance of education. We especially target mothers. Many mothers are illiterate because in their time they were not encouraged or expected to go to school, so before we can really get support for girls into education we need the mothers to recognise the importance of education so that they will then be the advocates within the home and within the wider community.

My impact

I have been working with the Nadowli Assembly Women’s Advocacy Group, a group of female leaders who have been elected by their community to represent them to the authorities. Because of their personal knowledge of the issues and the challenges that the girls face in education, we’re able to work together to design creative ways of tackling the issue of getting girls into school. They bring their cultural knowledge and experience of what’s appropriate in Ghana, while I develop their skills in networking and influencing, and effective proposal writing so that they can secure funding for their projects.

Recently I helped them secure funding from Barclays Africa for a project called GREAT, which stands for Girls Retention Enrolment and Transition Project. GREAT Project will enable the assembly women to address poor retention rates in school by providing the most deprived children with resources such as uniforms, books and bags, helping schools improve décor and resources, and improving the availability of mentoring and school club activities. For the most talented there will be an ambassador programme that will support girls to travel to Accra to see women role models, such as the president’s wife, and business and NGO leaders, who they can aspire to. 

How it fits with other VSO efforts

VSO volunteers work in a range of ways in Ghana. We have teacher support officers who help teachers learn new skills and find simple ways of working with limited resources, for example using bottle tops as counters for children in school. Meanwhile, management support officers who work with education authorities make improvements in areas such as monitoring and evaluation, teacher management and school planning. My role fits in because I’m helping the community to recognise the importance of education, so collectively you have a holistic approach coming from all different angles to ultimately improve the quality of education for children.

As a child, Jan Teevan says she dreamed of travelling the world on “The Good Ship Hope,” working as a doctor and providing care to mothers and children in the developing world.

Unfortunately, her dream of becoming a doctor ended after she took her first volunteer hospital job.

“I became a candy stripper [hospital volunteer] for a summer in high school, working in a hospital, and I thought, no, doctors deal with sick people,” she says. “I don’t want to be a doctor.”

It was only after she had her three children that Jan says she found another way to fulfill her dream of working with mothers and children. A self-proclaimed hippie, Jan decided to opt out of hospital care and have her children at home with the assistance of a midwife.  That’s when she found her true calling.

“When I heard about midwifery, I realised that I could do the medical stuff for healthy people having babies. It was the perfect job for me.”

In the 1980s, Jan apprenticed with her own midwife in Calgary, as part of a home birth movement that was still illegal in that province. She later went on to become one of the first fully certified and government-recognised midwives in Ontario – and established along with her colleagues a thriving practice in Ottawa helping mothers who wanted the experience of home birthing their babies.

But one piece of the dream was still missing.

“What I’m always looking for is a new experience, a feeling like I’m making a difference. If there’s need, it makes me feel like I’m doing more. I was working with women who pretty much had it all. So I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to go overseas?”

A midwife abroad

Jan was recruited by CUSO-VSO in 2007 to be part of a joint VSO project with the Malawi Ministry of Health. At the time, Malawi was facing a health care crisis; the ratio of health workers to patients was very low and as a result, the average life expectancy of a Malawian was 39-years-old. The country desperately needed volunteers and foreign workers to plug the gaps while new health workers could be trained. The country also needed to build the capacity of the existing Malawian health care workers to become tutors and lecturers.

With her long history in midwifery, Jan Teeves became part of the solution.

She was placed at the St. John’s Nursing School in Mzuzu where she worked for six months as a clinical tutor in midwifery for nursing students and nursing birthing technicians. 

“The mandate is that any nurse must be trained in midwifery because so much of the health care revolves around maternal-child health issues,” she says.

For Jan, it was a bit of a shock finding herself in a system that valued institutional childbirth over home-birth.

 “As far as the staff went, a lot of staff were brought up in the British-Malawian system of ‘I’m a nurse, I have skills – lie there. I found that they looked down at the patient rather than providing a collaborative, compassionate approach.

“There was a value difference – that’s for sure. When I said to the staff that a woman didn’t need to be flat on their back to give birth, they just laughed at me.  Said: ‘Oh, Jan, you’re so funny.’ You definitely got the feeling that if people couldn’t hear you about birth positions, how would they hear you about other things?”

The challenge of maternal health

There was also the challenge of helping the more than 11 per cent of Malawian women who presented in the hospital with the HIV/AID virus.  Each woman was required to take an HIV/AIDS test when they signed up for pre-natal care and delivery.

“We were following a protocol. When the women came into labour, they got medication while the baby was still inside and when the baby was outside, we gave the medication to the baby.”

Mothers were strongly encouraged to breast feed for six months, with no solid foods. This regime was followed to ensure the lining of the baby’s stomach wasn’t irritated by food and then infected by HIV through mother’s milk.
The use of formula was restricted because of the cost and the chance the formula would be contaminated by dirty water.

“We impressed upon the students the importance of using universal precautions at all times,” she said. “And we saw that students were more reluctant to hold the babies after birth, which is different than in North America where everybody touches the babies. But those were just precautions. There was strict confidentiality – the same rules for everybody – so nobody was labelled as being HIV.”

Jan believes her biggest contribution in Malawi was working with the nursing staff and students to help improve professional development.

 “One thing we realised was the important role the staff nurses played in the educational process for students. We needed to make sure that the already trained nurses were getting professional development.  After I left Malawi, that was the big piece that needed to be developed by the partners.”

Jan found herself in a key role, training the staff in emergency delivery procedures, after hearing about a baby who had died over one weekend from shoulder dystocia, a serious obstetrical emergency in which an infant’s shoulders becomes lodged in the mother’s birth canal.

In talking to senior nursing staff, Jan learned that the nurses were not required to become re-certified after graduation and, as a result, many were not adequately trained to perform modern emergency procedures.

“Every nurse in Ontario is required to do an emergency skills workshop every two years as part of their certification,” she says. “Every doctor at that hospital was required to attend continuing professional activity. But the nurses were not.

“I talked to my fellow tutors, and they picked out the skills that were important so I ran workshops with senior students on emergency skills – that was my contribution.”

Advice for volunteers

Jan has this advice for North Americans wanting to volunteer abroad.

“I’d advise any volunteer not to have high expectations. As my mother once said: ‘Catch them doing something right and build on that.’ It’s important to build the confidence of people who are doing great stuff, but who aren’t getting recognition. That’s certainly a place where an ex-pat can play a key role – really appreciate the good stuff that’s going on.”

A story of transformation

It’s early on a Tuesday morning and pupils in a class at the Morning Star Centre are singing a welcome song with their teacher. Each child is sitting calmly, their smiles matching those in the photographs that decorate the classroom walls.

It’s hard to believe that just two years ago, the atmosphere in this classroom was completely different. That was before the arrival of VSO volunteer Peter Thomas, a Special Needs Teacher Trainer. “We couldn’t control the difficult behaviour of the children,” explains Anh Nguyen ThiTu, the Head of Learning at the centre. “Peter has helped us make wonderful progress.”

Morning Star is one of the few centres for children with disabilities in Vietnam. Shockingly, only 1.2 per cent of Vietnamese children with disabilities receive an education. It has 200 pupils, many of whom are autistic. Before Peter arrived, teachers were frustrated because they did not have the skills to cope with pupils’ challenging behaviour. This created a tense and unpleasant atmosphere in which it was almost impossible for children to learn.

Dealing with frustration

“There used to be a lot of stress because they saw the behaviour of children with autism as naughty, so they punished them physically and maybe shouted at them,” says Peter. “So through workshops, advice and some classroom intervention, I’ve helped them to see that they need to be child-centred; that they need to follow the child. When they don’t push the child, the stress is reduced and children behave better.”

Indeed, Peter is credited with completely changing the method of teaching at Morning Star. “Peter comes to observe my class and if I have problems, he makes suggestions,” says Le TrunThi Hong, one of the centre’s teachers. “For example, a child in my class always used to cry. Peter suggested I stop forcing him to learn and to let him play with toys that are soft and tactile. The child is now more relaxed, which means he’s ready to learn. He’s shown us it’s about following the child, not forcing them.”

Spreading the word

And it’s not just the teachers who are learning about the children, as Peter has also been running workshops for parents, passing on skills that they can use at home. It’s clear from the children’s calm and happy demeanour as they sing their welcome song that Peter’s techniques are having a positive effect on their lives.

“I wish every school could have a Peter working with them,” says Le Thi Kim Guyen, a psychologist at the centre. “I’ve seen very good changes. It’s different to other centres in Vietnam – here they care about the children’s difficulties and want to understand them.” Guyen’s wish may be about to come true, as the Morning Star teachers plan to pass on their new skills to the other centres around the country. So thanks to Peter, hundreds more children will soon be smiling, too.

Driven from their homes by the Burmese military and living in camps on the Thai border, Karenni women are striving for a better future while confronting a legacy of violence. For VSO volunteer Zoe Latumbo, working alongside these remarkable people to raise awareness of human rights abuse, campaign for women’s rights and lay the foundations of a future Karenni State has proved to be a humbling and inspiring experience.

Escape into the unknown

“When the Burmese army entered our village, we feared for our lives,” recalls 58-year-old Bwee Paw. “My husband and I, together with our six children, fled into the jungle.” They took refuge at the Thai border and did their best to survive, improvising a shelter from bamboo and foraging for food.

Bwee is a Karenni, one of the 135 ethnic tribes in Burma who mostly live in Karenni State under the control of the Burmese military regime. Although it happened 19 years ago, she remembers her flight from the Burmese army as if it happened yesterday. “The Burmese military government tries to colonize Karenni State by destroying our villages and killing many people,” she says. Today, two camps in Thailand’s Mae Hong Son province are home to more than 23,000 Karenni refugees.

Bwee was one of the women who set up the Karenni National Women’s Organisation (KNWO) in 1993. This NGO provides Karenni women with skills to prepare them for leadership roles in a future Karenni State. It has set up nursery schools in the refugee camps, provides education for women, and advocates women’s and children’s rights.

Revealing abuse and lobbying for change

The arrival of Zoe Latumbo, a researcher and advocacy adviser who had worked previously as a VSO volunteer in Papua New Guinea, gave the KNWO a timely boost. “The women I work with have shown courage, perseverance, and a strong desire to learn,” says Zoe. “Each has a sad story to tell, which I find humbling and inspiring. I have been able to work on so many topics at the same time, which is very exciting – building a website, teaching them how to write for newsletters and reports, training staff and conducting workshops.”

She found her work so fulfilling that she extended her placement, uncovering disturbing information that has given her campaigning work an added edge. As Bwee explains, “Many Karenni women in the camps suffered from domestic violence because of the poor living conditions and the lack of livelihoods.” Many women have also suffered abuse at the hands of the Burmese military. In response, Zoe has helped the KNWO increase understanding about violence against women and has taught staff how to conduct interviews and document evidence of abuse.

Zoe adds, “We are trying to lobby with other international organisations for the United Nations to put Burma under the United Nations Security Council so that it could help do something about the situation. I realise that our organisation is very small; we can only work at the grassroots level. Nevertheless I would like to show the world that the situation in Burma has been going on for many years and is not getting any better.”

Living with prejudice

Mother of two Ben Nguyen became infected with HIV through her husband, who died nine years ago. “Luckily my children are not infected,” she explains, “but when I took my son to kindergarten the staff treated him very badly. They wouldn’t let him play with other children. He would be left to sit on a chair, apart from the rest of the pupils.”

Despite testing her son for HIV repeatedly, Ben found that staff would not believe the test result. “They thought I’d paid for it to be declared negative. I even asked the head teacher to go with us to see the test being taken, but they refused.”

This kind of discrimination is not uncommon among the HIV and AIDS community in a country where there is little public awareness of the infection. Over the past 10 years, however, self-help groups run by and for people living with HIV and AIDS have begun to emerge. Such groups are a lifeline for people like Ben, who have become isolated from their former friends and neighbours.

Positive action

Today Ben is a member of a group called Hoa Sua, which has 54 members, most of whom are women. As well as creating a supportive environment for its members, the group offers care, treatment and advice to more than 500 patients living with HIV and AIDS in the Hanoi area. Ben is Deputy Manager of Home Care, which involves visiting people who are in the advanced stages of AIDS. “I give them food, clean their wounds and wash their bodies,” she says. “I share my status with them. This helps them feel more accepted and understood. They realise they are not alone.”

To help support this growing trend for self-help, a number of VSO volunteers are working to help strengthen the groups – through assisting with funding applications, or offering technical support or training. David Graham is one such volunteer.

Offering essential support

With a background in health promotion, he’s using his skills to deliver health education and training for various groups, including Hoa Sua. Recently, Hoa Sua ran a series of HIV awareness events in areas known for high levels of stigma and discrimination. David spoke at two of the events – each of which was attended by about 200 people.

“It was really powerful,” he recalls. “When the Director of Hoa Sua Group disclosed her status, she got people from the audience to come up to the stage and shake her hand. It was the first time many of them had met somebody prepared to disclose they were HIV positive.”

David is looking to the future with enthusiasm – excited about his work with Hoa Sua and with other groups around Hanoi. The future is also looking brighter for Ben. “Discrimination has reduced since we joined the Hoa Sua Group,” she says. “Attitudes are changing. The group is helping us support each other and improve our quality of life.”

A typical Lagos traffic jam. Six lanes of traffic where there should be three. Chokingly thick exhaust fumes. Dozens of damfus – decrepit yellow VW buses – jostling for space, full to bursting with commuters. Hawkers weaving their way around the vehicles, selling anything from newspapers to phone cards to toilet seats. Armed SUV after armed SUV, sirens blaring, accompanying anonymous politicians to important meetings.

Amid the chaos of the daily jam sits an intriguing blue van. ‘I am proud to be a LADY MECHANIC’ is emblazoned on its side, accompanied by images of women in blue t-shirts bent over the bonnet of a truck. The van promises ‘FREE TRAINING WITH MONTHLY SALARY!’. Two phone numbers and an email address encourage people to find out more.

Madam Sandra had a dream…

This is the van of The Lady Mechanic Initiative, a ground breaking non-governmental organisation that is challenging gender stereotypes across Nigeria. Its founder – and driver of the van – is the charismatic Madam Sandra, who as a child was told in a dream that she should become a mechanic.

Undeterred by those who doubted her, Sandra started her training aged 14. Twenty years on she has inspired dozens of girls to follow in her footsteps and is famous all over the country. Another 40 Lady Mechanics are set to graduate this summer.

In the van’s passenger seat is Russell McKeown, a VSO volunteer who is spending two years sharing his skills and expertise with Madam Sandra and the Lady Mechanic Initiative.  Originally from Lancashire, Russell is drawing on over 25 years’ experience in engineering and business to train the girls and help develop the organisation further.  

The Lady Mechanics and VSO working together

Russell’s official job title is ‘Automobile Mechanical Trainer’ but he uses that loosely because his role encompasses so much more.

‘As well as lecturing in mechanics and taking the girls into the garages to reinforce what they’ve learnt on the academic side, I’m chief letter writer, I fundraise, I meet with government officials, I offer general support on running the business,’ explains Russell. ‘I’m a qualified mechanical engineer but I’ve also got a business degree, so it has been really fulfilling to use such a diverse range of skills.’ 

The most rewarding part of Russell’s work is seeing the girls in the garages, accepted by the men they’re working alongside. In a male dominated profession and in a country where there is great pressure for women to stay at home and have children, the Lady Mechanics are an inspiration.

Life-changing support for the most vulnerable

Many of Madam Sandra’s mechanics are – or were - among the most vulnerable girls and women in Nigeria: street children, ex convicts, widows, commercial sex workers.

‘Recruitment is done on the back of a truck going round Lagos with a loudspeaker so that we can reach a really diverse range of people,’ says Russell. ‘The training isn’t just about mechanics; it’s about life skills. The girls become so much more confident.’

Three years of free training and apprenticeships lead to good jobs and a much brighter future for these vulnerable girls and women. Society benefits too. ‘The Lady Mechanic Initiative is very successful in terms of how it’s giving back to society,’ says Russell. ‘Girls are earning a decent salary so of course that affects their families and the local community.’

The Lady Mechanic Initiative in demand

Back in the traffic jam, the intriguing blue van is attracting lots of attention. Hawkers, pedestrians and drivers who’ve abandoned their cars clamour round it, firing questions at Sandra and Russell. ‘I want my daughter to become a Lady Mechanic! How do I sign her up?’ 

Their queries answered, they return to their places in the traffic jam. Already futures are looking up for another generation of Nigerian girls.

“Sex is easy to joke about, but difficult to talk about”

“Vietnam has a saying that sex is easy to joke about, but difficult to talk about,” explains Dr Hoang Tu Anh, Director of the Centre for Creative Initiatives in Health and Population, or CCIHP, a Vietnamese organisation which works in the area of reproductive and sexual health rights across the country. “Our research has shown young people are displaying risky sexual behaviour because they don’t have enough knowledge about sex and relationships.”

In reaction to this, CCIHP set up CHAT, an online counseling service aimed at 14 to 24 year-olds who are looking for advice and support on anything to do with sex, reproductive health, relationship issues and HIV. “We are promoting healthy sexuality. We acknowledge young people have the right to have safe sex, so we have created an environment for them to talk about this.

The government were initially cautious

CHAT has been a huge success. “At first the Government was cautious, says Dr Hoang. “People saw we were talking about sex and using the internet, and they thought it was dangerous. But we convinced them that what we do would be healthy. Now they have seen what we do and they trust us.”

Today the service gets on average 10,000 hits a day, from young Vietnamese from provinces all over the country and abroad. It runs from 8am to 6pm, employing counselors who respond to emails, a journalist who uploads articles, and moderators who oversee the forum.

Ian’s working to make the service more efficient

VSO volunteer Ian Bromage is now also working on CHAT, as part of his placement as Organisational Development Advisor at CCIHP. Before volunteering, Ian worked as a project manager at a medical company. “I’ve brought several transferable skills,” says Ian, “planning and coordination, and motivating people to be able to deliver results. These are key skills here, and they can be applied to any sector.”

Ian is involved in helping to develop CHAT’s marketing material, such as posters and leaflets, to help publicise the service and so extend its reach. This year he also plans to work on making it more efficient, and will help set up a telephone counseling service to run alongside the website. “I will be involved in seeking funds for the service,” he says, “which is another avenue of communication for young people and will allow them to speak to someone, rather than just emailing and asking for support.”

The perfect partnership

Ian is thoroughly enjoying working on CHAT. “One of the delights for working for CCIHP is that they are quite radical and they will tackle issues not widely spoken about in Vietnam,” he explains. The positive feeling is entirely mutual – CCIHP are thrilled for him to be part of the CHAT team. “We feel so lucky to have Ian in the organisation,” says Dr Hoang. “It helps having an outside view so we can see more clearly how to develop. Local non government organizations don’t have many resources in Vietnam so to have his expertise is wonderful.”

Mr Mirzosulton's Correct dairy farm helps to reduce poverty in the region by working with local dairy producers. It employs more than 40 full-time workers and gets milk for processing from over 100 small-scale producers in neighbouring villages.

“We provide work for full-time workers who would otherwise migrate to Russia to work on building sites, leaving women behind to care for all the needs of their extended families. Our workers receive significantly more than workers in Dushanbe, despite the fact that here in Khojand the cost of living is less.”

The workers at the farm receive good benefits and even have access to a fund for family emergencies. Mirzosulton explains the farm’s ethics by explaining its unusual name: “I want us to be correct in quality, correct as a person, correct in every way.”

As well as processing milk, the farm also offers opportunities for local women to sell their milk products back to the farm at competitive rates.

Successful partnership

In early 2010, VSO partnered with Correct, by placing Latvian dairy processing expert, Viesturs Krilovs, on a short-term placement. Viesturs has ample experience in the industry including establishing a dairy-processing factory in Russia and helping Latvian dairy processors shift from Soviet to European standards. His role at Correct was a volunteer dairy-processing adviser.

With Viesturs help, Mr Mirzosulton, developed plans to expand his factory, improve processing management and increase his workforce to more than 60 full-time employees. His plan could potential provide contracts to hundreds of small-scale milk producers, securing more livelihoods in the region.

According to Mirzosulton, “Viesturs has provided a very high level of expertise to Correct. When I worked with consultants in the past they have only been able to answer six out of my ten questions. Viesturs has the experience and technical background to answer all my questions and always comes up with suggestions that are realistic for the context. He has helped with the management aspects of dairy processing, equipment, quality and he really considers everything”.

The partnership has been so successful that Mirzosulton is considering contracting Viesturs to advise him on his new factory. 

 Mirzosulton has also agreed to host a guided visit, organised by VSO, for members of the women’s co-operative, Zamzam. The women’s co-operative provides opportunities for rural women in the district to earn a livelihood.  This includes through wool production and dairy processing. The visit will enable the women to learn about Mirzosulton’s experience of transforming Correct – from kitchen production like theirs – to the successful business it is today.

VSO Tajikistan hopes to work with many other community-based businesses in the near future.

A question of survival

The UN estimates that during Sierra Leone’s ten-year civil war, some 10,000 children were recruited as soldiers – thousands more were exiled to neighbouring countries or fled to other parts of Sierra Leone. Abass Koroma from Thonkoba, near Makeni in northern Sierra Leone, is one of those who avoided recruitment but whose life and education were severely affected by the conflict.

“I was born in Thonkoba and have lived here all my life, except during the civil war when I was forced to leave my home and lived in the bush,” he says. “For many years I lived on wild fruit and bush meat. At certain points I thought my life would end like that.”

Although Abass managed to avoid capture, when he returned home there were few opportunities for him: “Many schools were forced to close during the war so I was unable to finish my schooling. When I returned to my village in 2002, I had no qualifications or source of income.”

For four years, Abass relied on subsistence farming, lacking the skills to make the most of opportunities to profit from farming. That changed in 2006 when VSO partner organisation CCYA (The Centre for Coordination Youth Activities) established a programme in Thonkoba.

New opportunities

When CCYA community development workers visited Thonkoba to tell residents about a beekeeping cooperative they planned to establish, Abass seized the opportunity with both hands. Membership includes training in beekeeping and honey extraction techniques; help to set up a bank account; and all the necessary equipment. All profits from the sale of the honey go back to the cooperative.

Although CCYA can draw on the skills of local community development workers to train and support the cooperatives, it lacked the organisational expertise to expand its work to reach more people like Abass. VSO Youth for Development volunteer Jayne Butler is now working with CCYA on a research project to further identify the needs of young people in Sierra Leone and help them to more effectively access donor funding.

Life-changing results

In its first eighteen months, the cooperative produced 10 gallons of honey, with profits helping 25 members. A sister cooperative was established in neighbouring Mambamba, and other CCYA-run initiatives include an agricultural farming and goat-breeding programme. So far, almost 250 individuals and their families have benefited from this programme.

Abass is putting the finishing touches to a brick house that he has built with his share of the profits. The project has given him the opportunity to move out of his childhood home and start an independent life. He says, “With the coming of CCYA we learnt new skills, but we also opened our minds about how if we work together as a community we can achieve more, which means better lives for all of us.”

In India, a shocking 78,000 mothers die in childbirth and from complications of pregnancy every year.

Many are very young: among women aged 15 to 19, 16 percent have already started having children. The majority will live in rural areas where teenage marriages are common and where women struggle to feed their families, let alone themselves. Their status is low, so women are last to eat; if there was little food to begin with, there’ll be little left over when their turn comes. As a result of their inadequate diets, more than half of Indian women are anaemic - another potential killer during childbirth.

When traditions become life threatening

“Traditionally many women deliver at home,” explains Sangita Singh, a VSO volunteer working with NEEDS. “It’s something that’s entrenched within them. A lack of education and a lack of awareness of little things, like monitoring pregnancies throughout their term, and looking for very easy warning signs around their health, mean that there are a lot of preventable deaths.”

Looking around the tiny hut that she shares with 12 members of her family in the remote village of Khendira, it’s hard to believe that Kanchan Devi is one of the lucky ones. But compared to many, she is fortunate - she has given birth to three babies and has lived to tell the tale.

Like two-thirds of Indian women, 25 year old Kanchan had her first two children at home. There was no one but an untrained traditional birth attendant to help her through the delivery, so Kanchan was putting herself at great risk. But she knew no other way. 

NEEDS volunteers dispel fears and change attitudes

Then, when Kanchan was pregnant with her third child, a local volunteer from NEEDS visited her.  Sadha told Kanchan about the benefits of giving birth in a hospital. “She told me it would be better for me,” says Kanchan. “But I was scared. I didn’t know what to expect. I thought I would prefer to have my baby at home.”

But Sadha was persuasive, so a heavily pregnant Kanchan bravely travelled the 20 kilometres to the nearest hospital in Deoghar. As Sadha had promised, Kanchan was treated well. “I received a registration card, dahl and rice every day and vaccinations,” she recalls. “Nurses were there, doctors were there, I had medicines.”

Kanchan was also given all-important iron tablets to help fight anaemia. She didn’t have to pay to give birth in hospital; instead, she received 1600 rupees (about £22) from the hospital for going there to have her baby.

“After I had the experience, I was no longer scared,” remembers Kanchan. “I felt good about getting the free care. I will tell my family and neighbours what Sadha told me. My hope is that all women in India will be given the information I was given.”

Real life in rural India

Asked if she would choose the hospital over home when her fourth child comes along, Kanchan laughs, but her words are somber. “Three children is enough – three is too many. If we had had a girl and a boy, it would have been fine. But as we had no boy, we had to have another. We are very poor people and children are very expensive. Where will we get the money from?”

For now, Kanchan has her work cut out. While her husband is out earning a living as a bus conductor, she does all the chores in the house while caring for her three small children. Her hopes and dreams for them? “We are poor people. We don’t have dreams. I hope that my children will be educated, and will learn to read and write.”

Thirty-nine year old Fatmata Kanjia is a final year BSc nursing student at the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Sierra Leone. One of her teachers was UK nurse and VSO volunteer Joanna Haworth. Here Fatmata, who also works part-time in a Freetown hospital, explains how Joanna's training has helped her, her patients and her family.

“Joanna taught us many things that have helped me provide better care for my patients, such as ward administration, staff supervision and infection control,” Fatmata said. “For example, before we never checked if junior nurses had completed their tasks. Now we supervise them properly and provide a proper handover to the next shift to make sure all patients receive the care they need.”

The importance of talking to patients

Fatmata sees communication as one of the greatest skills she has learnt from Joanna. “Before I used to sit and talk to the nurses. Now I go to the bedside and talk to my patients. Some unfold problems pertaining to their care that they have not disclosed to their doctor.”

“There was a patient with acute abdominal pain but she was afraid to explain the circumstances of her condition to the doctor. She didn't want people to know,” Fatmata explained. “I read through her charts and history and I talked to her. She was bold to tell me that she had done an abortion three months before but she did not want me to tell anybody. I urged her to let me tell the doctor because he was treating her blindly. She consented but only if the doctor agreed not to tell her husband. He agreed and her treatment was changed.”

She added: “Two weeks later the patient was discharged. If I did not speak to her and gain her confidence she would not have recovered.” When Fatmata told her student colleagues about her experience, many said they had had similar experiences following Joanna's teaching.

Taking new skills home

Fatamata's new skills are also benefiting her family. “I use many of the things I have learnt from Joanna at home. For communication, you need to interact with people. If you have a problem you should share it, you should speak to your partner. My daughter asks so many questions. I used to say leave me. Now I listen to her and try to explain and answer her questions.”

Joanna’s work continues

Hospital patients will continue to benefit from Joanna's teaching long after she returns to the UK.  “All of us on the course are teaching our colleagues the things we have learnt from Joanna,” Fatmata said. “I want to transfer my knowledge to other nurses to improve their skills and improve patient care across many hospitals. With their mission of sharing skills and knowledge, VSO provides long term benefits to Sierra Leone as a whole.”

Why VSO?

My dad was a VSO volunteer back in the 1960s when it first started and I've often thought about doing it myself, both to help others and for the personal experience. Then, after going along to a VSO health information day, I had one of those dawning moments. I was walking home from my job as a matron in the emergency department of a London hospital. It was cold and grey and I felt like I was walking on a hamsters’ wheel and if I didn't do something about it, this was going to be my life. It took another 18 months for me to get my mind in the right place to get on that plane.

And since you got on that plane?

For the majority of my time here I've really enjoyed it. Sierra Leone is a great place, the people are fantastic. But it's not been easy by any stretch of the imagination. Day to day living can be hard, there are issues with water and electricity. I had a rat living in my house. And I had typhoid, which isn't the most pleasant illness I've ever had. But getting to know a culture in more depth than a two-week holiday allows is a fantastic experience. Just walking down the street is like a sensory overload. Everything is so colourful, rich and vibrant.

So what about your placement?

I work at the Faculty of Nursing in central Freetown, which is part of the University of Sierra Leone. I've taken on a number of different tasks, from teaching BSc nursing students to helping administration staff set up filing systems. But my greatest achievement has been helping to establish a new course in nursing education.

Tell us more.

Before you can have qualified nurses, you need people who are qualified to train them.  When I arrived, all student nurse educators were sent to Nigeria to train but the NGO funding the training wanted the University to provide the course in Freetown. So we held a workshop to develop a curriculum pertinent to Sierra Leone. It took a lot of work, not only to write it, but also to get the course through the various committees, deans and university hierarchy for approval. We did it though. The course is up and running and Sierra Leoneans can now study for a diploma in nursing education in Freetown.

What difference will the new course make? 

I hope it will make a huge difference in the long term. The university can now train more than 10 nurse educators in Freetown for the same price as sending four students to Nigeria, making it more cost effective. It will also improve nurse training. There can be as many as 120 students per tutor on nursing courses. With more trained tutors, class sizes will reduce giving students a better quality of teaching. It's a major achievement for the country.

What challenges have you faced?

It has been hard. Being a VSO volunteer is about capacity building and taking people with you. There have been moments when I have felt like saying 'give me that and I'll do it' but that doesn't achieve anything and you have to hold back. Instead, I've pushed and dragged and pulled people along with me, and as a team, we've accomplished something significant.

How has your experience changed you?

I come from a working environment that is very focussed on targets and time. But that doesn't work here, and if you try to work in that way you achieve less. Instead I've had to learn a lot about being flexible and staying calm, particularly in situations beyond my control. If you're not, you'll go crazy.

On a more practical side, I've been able to develop my skills in a way I would never have been able to at home. Working in a different culture forces you to adapt and find new ways to communicate and teach to enable understanding on both sides.

What advice would you offer anyone who is considering becoming a VSO volunteer?

Being a VSO volunteer is not just about you sharing your skills, it's also about you having an experience so you have to be totally honest about your reasons for doing it and what you want to get out of it. And lower your expectations on what you hope to achieve - don't think you are going to change the world, because you won't. As they say in Sierra Leone, 'small small'.

Wake up call

The roosters start crowing at daybreak in the village where we live and the local people, not having electricity, live and work according to the daylight, but a lifetime of habits is hard to break and I don't rise until about seven. If the power is working I'll have tea and toast for breakfast, if not, I'll settle for milk and bread.

My role with VSO in Malawi 

I work with the Ministry of Education as a professional development facilitator. The schools are clustered into zones and each zone has a Teacher Development Centre, managed by an adviser. My colleague Kieran, who also happens to be my husband, and I work with these advisers – all 49 of them in a geographical area spreading hundreds of miles north of where we live.

The advisers are former primary school principals and they are responsible for the professional development of the teachers in their zones, sometimes up to 200 teachers. It's a daunting task and that is where we come in. We try to support them with trainings and regular meetings, we facilitate exchange visits between districts and we have helped to improve networking among learners and educators with regular newsletters.

Travel

We have a monster jeep, which comes in handy as many of the centres are on earth roads that are often waterclogged during the heavy rains. We have to ford a river, two foot deep, on today's journey, but we pull it off and continue on our way. We have gotten stuck a few times, but not for long. Even on a seemingly deserted track, people pop up out of nowhere to help Kieran push the vehicle while I try to steer it out of the mud.

Differences from working at home

One of the biggest challenges I have encountered is adapting to the Malawian work ethic, which can be summed up in the words: “No hurry, No worry!” Meetings are often postponed or cancelled, or simply no-one shows up, communication is poor and there can be an over-reliance on the NGO sector and a lack of initiative on the part of the locals. But, I don't blame them, they have grown up on a diet of handouts and charity, and it has been a real endeavour of mine; to instil independence in my colleagues here.

What I do to relax

I try to get an hour on our veranda as the sun sets. My main pastime here is reading, it is just as well I love books, as there is little in the way of other activities.

What I miss about home

I know it is a cliché, but by far what I miss the most are my family and friends. I have made some new friends here and we are tied together in this shared experience, but nothing makes up for the comfort of old friends and the familiar warmth of family. I can't wait to see them all again.

What I love about being here

The thing that I love most about Malawi is, without a shadow of a doubt, are the children. They are the most beautiful creatures full of smiles and giggles, growing up in a carefree world of skipping, dancing, tree climbing and the enviable freedom.

When I arrived in Malawi over six months ago, I felt sorry for the people all the time. I was overcome with pity and guilt, but the longer I am here the more that pity turns to envy. In Ireland, we tend to associate Africa with famine, disease and war, but there is another reality here. There is an overwhelming sense of kinship, community and loyalty, and people are quick to laugh and smile.

Get up/breakfast

I wake up at 5.30pm just before my phone alarm goes off. The army camp down the road has started sending the men out road running early in the mornings, so I get woken up bright and early every morning by the sound of running feet. Breakfast is coffee, bread and a hard-boiled egg I cooked yesterday, plus my anti-malaria tablet.

Travel

I leave the house at 6.45am and head to work. There should be a lot more children on the roads on their way to school but most will still be at home doing household chores and will arrive to school late. The 15-minute walk to work is the usual procession of greetings and the occasional giggling handshake.

My job

I spend the morning updating the staff returns from the local primary. All schools are short teachers, some have only two-thirds of the staff they need and many don’t have a principal. This is a major problem here – teaching is the absolutely last refuge for anyone with an education, especially primary teaching. In January, the government completely changed the primary school system. This means that teachers who were already underpaid and poorly respected are now expected to start work earlier, finish later and have only a 30-minute break in the middle of the day, which isn’t long enough for them to go home and eat.

I also spent the morning helping my two colleagues with their computers. The District is helping their employees to buy laptops but is providing absolutely no training whatsoever, so I am trying to help them with the basics of Excel and Word.

The afternoon is spent teaching the district staff English. This wasn’t part of my original job description but, as work has been slow to develop, I am happy to be doing this.

Meeting new friends

This evening I have a drink at a local pub with Enock, a Ugandan teacher who also teaches English to the district staff. I asked him what brought him here to Rwanda. He said he was working as a tourist guide in a park on the Uganda/Congo/Rwanda border when the group he was with was attacked by the Interahamwe. He ran 30 kilometres to the Ugandan army base to raise the alarm.

What I do to relax

I usually log on to Facebook and catch up with family and friends (it is a bit weird working a computer by candlelight – there is no electricity where I live).

Reflection

I have been in Rwanda since September 2008 and it has been the single greatest experience of my life. Yes there have been problems and there continue to be problems: frustrating bureaucracy, incredible inefficiency, a culture that can seem impenetrable at times. But there is warmth and friendliness...and safety. I have made some great new friends and hope to make even more!

There have been difficult moments, difficult days and there will be more – but never for even one second have I regretted coming here.

Why short term volunteering?

“I hadn’t volunteered before, so I didn’t want to launch straight into a long-term role,” says Bola. “Twelve weeks would be a taster, giving me the opportunity to do a self-contained piece of work – something that I could confidently start and finish.”

Based in Rwanda, where nearly half of all children fail to complete basic education, Bola was supporting the Muhanga District Education Office in improving the performance of the 23 secondary and 106 primary schools in the area.

Bola’s professional expertise enabled her to achieve a lot in those 12 weeks. Her tenacity and sense of humour helped too. “The short time scale proved to be both a challenge and opportunity,” Bola recalls. “My colleagues responded positively to my constant reminders that I was only there for 12 weeks. So things moved along quite quickly.”

Making a meaningful contribution

As well as undertaking a training needs analysis and running two workshops for 40 teachers, Bola helped to implement a new monitoring and evaluation process. 

“So that they could identify priority areas to improve, my colleagues were visiting schools and gathering data,” describes Bola. “But this was ad hoc, with different people gathering different information at different times. As a result, the data couldn’t be easily evaluated.”

Bola created a new monitoring and evaluation tool to be used on school visits: a detailed checklist with a wide range of questions, from the number of children in the school to the number of blackboards and toilets. This tool ensures that all information gathered on the schools is standardised, making it easier for Bola’s colleagues to plan and prioritise.

The short-term/long-term dynamic

VSO International’s long and short-term placements are often designed to compliment each other. 

Bola’s was no exception. As well as playing a vital part in developing a long-term volunteer’s job description, she laid a solid foundation for him to build on.

“The training needs analysis I did with the director of education led to the development of a year-long training plan for teachers,” Bola explains. “This plan will be supported by the new volunteer when he arrives in January. It means he won’t be starting from scratch.”

Supporting diaspora organisations back in the UK

Being black was one of the biggest challenges Bola faced as a volunteer. “The locals’ stereotype of a volunteer is white,” she explains. “So they’d either assume I was Rwandan and talk at me very quickly, ignoring my pleas of “English! Anglais!” or they’d address everything to the white volunteers. They just aren’t used to black people volunteering.”

That’s one of the reasons Bola is now getting involved with VSO’s Diaspora Volunteering Initiative. Through this initiative, VSO helps diaspora communities in the UK to volunteer in their countries of heritage. Bola is drawing on her own experiences of volunteering to support two diaspora organisations - the African Child Trust and the Medical Association of Nigerian Specialists and GPs - to develop their own volunteering programmes. “I want to see more black people volunteering,” she says.

Bola’s commitment to the diaspora organisations and her plans to undertake another placement with VSO demonstrate her great enthusiasm for volunteering. “I’d recommend it 100 per cent!” says Bola. “It widens horizons, broadens skills and gives you an appreciation of what can be done if you put your mind to it. You might not be able to save the world but you can certainly make a small difference in a small way. And that’s the start of the ripple effect.”

Impact

• Bola ran two workshops for 40 teachers on topics such as staff appraisals, child centred methodologies and using local resources like rice sacks and bottle tops for teaching aids.

• The training needs analysis for head teachers that Bola undertook with her employer led to the development of a year-long training plan, which will be supported by a long term volunteer.

• As a result of her experiences in Rwanda, Bola is now helping two diaspora organisations in the UK to develop their own volunteering programmes in Africa.
  

Healthcare in Malawi

Although VSO usually focuses its efforts on training and improving organisations’ structures, the severe shortage of doctors in Malawi means we are currently recruiting for doctor roles while local staff are trained.

Twenty-nine year old GP Katrien Deschamps is one such doctor. She is based at Rumphi District Hospital in the north of Malawi. Rumphi is a small rural town, 65 kilometres of steep winding roads and rickety bridges from the amenities of Mzuzu, the region’s capital. With its rusting ambulances, over-crowded wards and severe lack of staff, the hospital struggles to serve the thousands of patients who might travel for days to get there.

“The whole healthcare system in Malawi is very understaffed, with very little nurses, very little clinicians, very little of everything in general,” says Katrien. “So that’s why along with my fellow volunteer Andrew, I’m the most senior person in Rumphi District Hospital. Until we came there were no doctors here.”

Lives being saved

Before Katrien and Andrew arrived at Rumphi, lives were being lost simply because doctors were not on hand to treat patients and ambulances were not available to transfer them to the central hospital. But VSO has changed that.

“Since the VSO doctors came we are not referring many patients to the central hospitals,” says Bernard Chavinda, the district health officer. “We are now able to manage these patients here because of the expertise of the VSO doctors. This has reduced the transport costs to the central hospitals. It has made a big difference to us here.”

'If you help just one patient each day or pass one little thing on to a nurse or clinical officer, you’re helping healthcare in Malawi.'

Making the work sustainable

Though Katrien’s is primarily a clinical role, she incorporates training colleagues into her job at every opportunity. “Andrew and I have introduced a blood bank system, and right now I’m in the middle of training on ECG. The government gave all the district hospitals ECG machines but nobody knows how to use them because it’s not part of their basic clinical officer training. So I started lessons on Saturdays in how to use the ECG machines, and how to handle the patient if they find abnormalities.” 

Katrien is also organising training in neonatal care for nurses. “I think small things like this can bring a bit of sustainable change, so it’s useful that I’m here.”

Clinical officer Wizo Chilongo agrees. “A lot of improvement has taken place since Dr Katrien and Dr Andrew came here. They had the idea that at the end of every month staff should meet, and that improves our skills and our working relationships. For the patients we just used to write on pieces of paper and then leave them on the table, and then you’d look for the paper the whole day and not find it. But now we have patient files where we keep all the notes. So we are learning a lot from them.”

More doctors needed in the future

VSO needs more GPs to work in district hospitals all over Malawi. Katrien is keen to reassure doctors who think Malawi is too much of a challenge that they really can make a difference. “You’re not going to change the world working for a few years in a developing country, but if you help just one patient each day or pass one little thing on to a nurse or clinical officer, you’re doing something – you’re helping healthcare in Malawi.”

Impact

• Thanks to VSO doctors, staff at Rumphi District Hospital can now manage more patients there rather than referring them to the central hospital. This saves transport costs – and lives.

• As a result of a blood bank set up by VSO volunteers, Rumphi District Hospital now has an efficient blood transfusion system.

• Patient notes are now filed, enabling staff to work more efficiently.
  

Putting privilege to good use

A former marketing manager for Scottish Widows and more recently a self-employed marketing consultant, Ellen felt she had a “great lifestyle” but was “helping rich people get richer”. So, when her children left home, she made the life-changing decision to become a VSO volunteer. “I felt I had been very privileged in my upbringing and my education and had never really had to struggle,” she says. “For many people in the world life is much harder so I wanted to put my privilege to good use in the developing world.”

Now on placement in Johannesburg, Ellen is working as a co-ordinator at the Reproductive Health and HIV Research Unit of the University of the Witwatersrand (RHRU), an organisation that aims to improve HIV care and treatment services in South Africa, and provides research into prevention and best practice relating to HIV.

Helping sex workers find alternative income

Ellen’s work includes managing a project that helps sex workers find alternative sources of income so that they can exit the sex industry. Across Johannesburg there are thousands of women working in the sex industry, where a large proportion are living with HIV and AIDS, and many more live with the daily risk of contracting the disease.

The project runs training programmes including sewing, baking and catering skills, and beauty therapy, which create new opportunities of income generation. “It’s not easy for women to exit sex work when most alternative jobs they are qualified to do pay at best a quarter of what they can earn as sex workers,” says Ellen. “But for those who are committed to changing their lives we want to make sure they have as much support and guidance as possible.”

Providing support for those living with HIV and AIDS

Ellen is also responsible for the growth and development of RHRU’s Community Care Centre in Johannesburg, an inner city resource that provides psycho-social support to those infected or affected by HIV. A typical day may consist of organising workshops on health and rights-related issues, attending consultation meetings, drafting funding proposals or counselling community members. “Everyday is very different,” she explains. “In some senses it’s not unlike corporate life but the content is different and the empathy needed is different.”

Looking to her future

Ellen is now coming to the end of her placement, but plans to stay in South Africa to continue in similar work. “Two years have passed in a flash and I would be heartbroken to leave RHRU at this juncture. In the last year in particular I’ve planted a lot of seeds that are just starting to grow now and, while I may not stay in South Africa forever, I’m certainly not ready to leave.”

I hadn’t realised VSO would want people of my age. All my VSO contacts went overseas straight out of university, so I was a little tentative when I contacted VSO and said,  “I’m an old git, I have reasonable health and these talents, are you interested?” And I really did expect them to say no but was pleasantly surprised. So here I am and I think it’s the best decision I ever made.

Here at International Hospital Kampala I’m called “Doctor Richard”, which is quite nice in a way – all the doctors are called by their first name. It’s a private hospital but has a charity wing, Hope Ward, which is where I work. It’s for people who can’t afford healthcare. There are a lot of people in Uganda with no money. If you don’t have money, you can’t get transport to the hospital or clinic. And even if you do get there you don’t have money to pay for drugs to get you better. The Ugandan government does provide free drugs for HIV, TB and malaria but they often run out. Sad stories of patients selling their HIV drugs to buy food are all too true.

Making sustainable changes

A lot of patients, particularly those with HIV and TB, come to us quite late and we really think they’re going to die. We feed them up with this disgusting stuff called millet porridge and they get their drugs and within a fortnight they’re up and about. It’s remarkable. There are not always successes, but people often bounce back when you just don’t think they will. So it’s a really rewarding job, but we’re only scratching the surface.

The doctors here are very hard working and very bright, but they don’t get a lot of support and every day they’re seeing things they’ve never seen before. So it’s good to supervise them on the ward rounds, to say, “why did you do that? Had you thought of doing it this way?” I work with the nurses too. Before they just weren’t used to being asked for their opinion, but now they’re so forthcoming. It’s very satisfying for me to see them change and their standards improve. To make all this sustainable I’m about to start working alongside a Ugandan specialist physician who will take over my role. It’s really important to have a figurehead, a key person who will teach and work with nurses when I leave.

I think it’s absolutely key for health workers in the UK to have exposure to Africa. If you haven’t, you just can’t imagine what the difference in healthcare is. It has been a real eye opener. I think every doctor should experience it if they can.

UWAMWIMA is an association of smallholder fruit and vegetable farmers in the West of Unguja, and Omar Abdullah was one of its founder members in 2004: "We set up UWAMWIMA, because we didn't have a voice. We needed a voice, and we needed a market."

Each of the 700 or so farmers in the association owns approximately one hectare of land, and all of them combine subsistence farming with growing a limited number of cash-crops. Until recently, however, Omar says it has been difficult for them to make a significant income through selling their crops to the tourist sector. The island's hotels and restaurants are thriving, but most local farmers continue to live beneath the basic needs poverty line.

Accessing the tourist market is difficult for smallholder farmers because they are at the wrong end of a complicated supply chain. Prosperous hotels buy their fruit and vegetables from agents, who source them from Stone Town's markets; the Stone Town market traders in turn buy their stock from regional market auctioneers.

Eighty per cent of vegetables sold in Zanzibar are imported

It's these auctioneers who individual farmers deal with, and the farmers are in a very weak negotiating position. Auctioneers have no shortage of produce to choose from – a staggering 80 per cent of vegetables sold in Zanzibar are imported – and so prices for farmers are reduced. The farmers have little choice but to accept the prices on offer: they have no means of storing their vegetables, so if they don’t make a sale within a day of picking them, the vegetables simply rot.

In other words, if a tourist buys a salad in a Stone Town restaurant, they shouldn't expect many of their shillings to trickle down to hard-working local farmers like Omar.

UWAMWIMA has expanded rapidly since Omar and the other farmers established it in 2004 with almost 700 members. When the members decided that they needed training and funds for new seeds, Omar went from door to door in Stone Town in order to enlist support. Now they receive funding and training from a coalition of local and international NGOs. In particular, they are being assisted by the Zanzibar Enterprise and Sustainable Tourism (ZEST) Project.

ZEST, which is managed by VSO, aims to reduce poverty on Zanzibar by building better links between producers and the tourism sector.

Following a value chain analysis into the fruit and vegetable sub-sector in 2006, ZEST has been training UWAMWIMA's members in business skills and in agronomic techniques – especially in how to grow the cash crops that hotels and restaurants actually want to buy. Importantly, ZEST has also provided UWAMWIMA with a storage site in Stone Town. Farmers will now be able to transport their fruit and vegetables to the site in bulk, where they can be kept in a cold storage facility. From there, the association can sell directly to hotels, restaurants and individual customers.

A local initiative with national plans

For UWAMWIMA's members, the new storage site should make a world of difference. The cold storage facility will increase the shelf life of vegetables from under a day to over a week, and the money that flows through to individual farmers will be far higher because it cuts out the middle-men between the farmers and Stone Town's hotels.

Thanks to promotion by ZEST, UWAMWIMA is building excellent relationships with hotels and restaurants. Quality produce is ensured as Zanzibari famers use only organic pesticides, and local vegetables are picked later than imported ones, which means that they are fresher and contain retain more nutrients. High-end hotels are keen to stock local, naturally grown vegetables.

"The reason we think this is a good project," Daniel Sambai, general manager of Stone Town’s Zanzibar Serena Inn, said, "is that firstly it's creating employment for local farmers, and secondly we're getting fresh organic vegetables. We want to show that the ripple effect of tourism is helping farmers. Our guests are happy because it’s fresh produce. We're proud that it's from Zanzibar."

UWAMWIMA currently gets support from international donors: through ZEST, VSO volunteers provide expertise, while USAID and CORD-AID supply funding and training. Accenture's Making Markets Work for the Poor global programme with VSO has given the initiative direction on Zanzibar. But the association remains very much a local initiative, and when Omar is asked where he hopes it will be in five years time, the first thing he says is: "I hope we will be independent of donors.”

“I want UWAMWIMA to be an umbrella organisation. We want farmers to keep joining us until all the fruit and vegetables consumed on Zanzibar are locally grown,” he added.

A life long dream

Head teacher Jean Marie has been convinced of the value of education and good teaching ever since he was a child, and has spent his whole life working towards the head teacher position he holds today. “When I was in primary school I recognised the efforts of my teacher and decided that was what I wanted to do,” he explains.

Because he was bright and his parents were poor, a sponsor agreed to pay his secondary school fees. Tragically however, in 1994, not long into his secondary education, the genocide disrupted everything. His sponsor was killed, and, no longer able to pay his fees, Jean Marie was forced to drop out.

Teaching to become a teacher

Determined not to let anything stand in the way of his dream of finishing his education and becoming a teacher, Jean Marie resolved to earn enough money to support himself through his final years of school. Ironically, the way he did this was in fact by teaching – as because so many teachers had fled or been killed during the genocide, anyone who had finished their primary education was encouraged to become primary teachers.

It took Jean Marie eight years to earn enough as an unqualified teacher to pay for his final years of secondary education, but by 2002 he was back in school, and by 2007 he was the fully qualified teacher he always wanted to be.

The importance of a good education

Just three years on, Jean Marie has been promoted to head teacher of Ntyazo Primary, a rural school in the southern province, where he is responsible for the education of 1,086 children. Despite receiving no extra training for the role, it is a responsibility he takes very seriously and he is determined his students receive a good education.

“I hope they do well and become important people,” he says. “For themselves and for their country. That includes many things – to be clever, to resolve problems in their life and in the lives of others. If they study very well they could become a leader, or a doctor, or a policeman.”

VSO volunteer helps improve his skills as a head teacher

Recently Jean Marie has been attending workshops run by VSO volunteer Melissa Hipkins, an education management adviser who has been working with the head teachers of 76 primary schools in the area.

“We’ve done many things,” explains Jean Marie. “She’s helped us to look at the statistics of term results and National Examination results, and she’s helped us to organise lesson inspection. She’s also shown us how to keep office documents and reports. This helps the organisation of the school, and so improves the children’s education.”

Putting skills to good use

Melissa will continue working with Jean Marie over the coming year. With his passion for education and his desire to serve his pupils well, the skills she is sharing will no doubt be put to good use.

Found abandoned in a forest

Sifa had a traumatic start in life. At just a few years old she was found abandoned in Nyungwe, a dense forest in the far south west of Rwanda. Nobody knows how long she had been there, but it is clear she had spent much of her short life surrounded by animals rather than humans. She walked on all fours, ate grass and sticks, and was terrified of people, curling into a foetal position when anyone came too close. At times her eyes rolled upwards, back into her head, and left alone she had only a vacant expression.

Staff had no training in caring for vulnerable children

Sifa was taken to a centre for disabled children, but there her life barely improved. As is the case in many such centres in Rwanda, staff had received no training in caring for vulnerable or disabled children, so did not know how to look after a child who had such complex problems. She was locked in a room – fed and clothed, but with little other care or attention.

Sifa remained in that room until the centre closed three years later. She was transferred to a similar centre, Ngwino Nawe, where the situation repeated. Now about seven years-old, she was still walking on all fours and staff had made no progress in socialising her. They saw her as a lost cause.

Sifa meets VSO volunteer Antonia Eastman

It was at this point that VSO volunteer Antonia Eastman met her. She had come to Ngwino Nawe to carry out a needs analysis as part of research into centres that include Deaf children. She remembers first seeing Sifa: “She was just huddled in the corner, very afraid. It was pitiful.”

Ignoring the staff’s assurances that she was beyond help, Antonia began to spend time sitting with her each day. She sang to her and gradually began to work at engaging eye contact – something Sifa had always shied away from. After a time, she began massaging her arms and legs to soothe and relax her. “It was human contact,” says Antonia, “something she wasn’t at all used to”.

Sifa begins to respond and staff carry on Antonia’s work

To everyone’s amazement, slowly Sifa began to respond. When Antonia left the centre a few weeks later, she urged staff to continue the things she had started. “The fact that they had seen a progression was great – they were so excited,” she says.

Six months on and Antonia has been back to Ngwino Nawe twice. With each visit she has witnessed an incredible change in Sifa. “There’s been huge strides,” she explains. “A while ago her eyes were just dull, now there’s curiosity there – like she wants to get to know you. She smiles and she joins in songs by clapping. She’s also learning to walk and is clearly trying to speak, or to make word-like utterances with her voice.”

It’s a miracle!

Staff at the centre are amazed at what they have achieved with Sifa. “It’s a miracle!” says Rosaline, one of girls who has been working with her. “Antonia realised Sifa needed time dedicated to her, and she taught us how to behave with her. We now sit down when we talk to her, and we give her things to play with so she doesn’t just lie down all the time.”

Hope for Sifa’s future – and the future of other vulnerable children

VSO has now identified the need for a long term volunteer to continue working with the staff at Ngwino Nawe and at other centres for disabled children in the area. “The new volunteer will build on what I’ve started,” says Antonia, “the need to put each child as an individual at the centre of their own learning and development.”

As the staff gain a greater understanding of working with vulnerable and disabled children, Sifa’s future will get ever brighter. They have recently discovered she is a gifted drummer, with incredible natural rhythm. The smile that lights up her face as she plays, shows just how far she, and the staff at Ngwino Nawe, have come.

Why did you decide to volunteer with VSO?

I’m a member of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists, which offers a one-year fellowship opportunity with VSO. I like the fact that the work VSO volunteers do is sustainable. Some other organisations seem to arrive, get the job done, and then leave.

Tell us about the work that you are doing.

I am here to help improve the skills of two doctors and a small team of midwives and general practitioners at Soe Public Hospital, so that they will be better able to respond to emergency obstetric cases. It’s important to me that I use everything as an opportunity for teaching. I could do everything myself, but then nothing will change once I’m gone. I do training sessions twice a week, on things such as forceps delivery.

What are some of your biggest achievements?

Before I arrived, none of the doctors in the hospital could do caesarean sections. But I’ve been gradually training them, and now we have two doctors who can do caesareans. They’re at the operative stage, but they still need to learn when to actually do the caesarean. So I’m gently pushing them into decision-making.

Another thing is that the ultrasound laboratory wasn’t being used before I arrived. The midwives and doctors didn’t know how to use the machine, and were scared. I’ve been teaching them how to use it, and how to observe the foetus. They all crowd round the ultrasound machine when I’m teaching them, and they’re all so eager to learn! Now, we do four or five ultrasound scans per day.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced?

I’ve had eight babies die at the hospital since I’ve been here. I’ve also had one maternal death since being here. I couldn’t prevent it, as the mother was in a coma when she came into the hospital. I’ve never had to deal with that in the UK.

What skills will you take back to the UK?

Some things I’m doing here are things I’ve never done before back in the UK. For example, I’ve had to deal with five eclampsia seizures here, which is more than I’ve ever done. I’ve only seen two in the UK in the last six or seven years.

By volunteering I have gained a completely different experience. It’s not just teaching, but also managerial experience. I have to manage the obstetrics unit, which is a job that consultants and managers would do back in the UK. I feel I now have more management skills, and that I’m more self-sufficient and decisive.

What’s your advice to obstetricians and gynaecologists considering volunteering?

You won’t change the world overnight, but little changes help. If you sustain just a few procedures, then you’ve made a difference.
 

When my husband saw the advert for VSO in The Independent it was asking for people with exactly my experience.

We looked at each other and the seed was sown. Suddenly we thought how good it would be to use the end of our careers to do something to help other people, and after attending an inspiring road show in Brighton we made our decision. 

‘Education is the way out of poverty’ is an often-heard phrase in Ethiopia.

Parents will go without many things to ensure their children get a good education. Education is free but the uniform, exercise books and pens are not. Some children don’t attend school because they can’t afford them; others will work on the streets as shoe shiners or selling chewing gum to get enough money to pay for them.

The number of children being educated has grown hugely in the last five years.

This is great for the potential of the country but it creates many problems too. Lack of classrooms means very large classes. In many schools they have half of the children attending school in the morning and the other half in the afternoon in order to cope with the numbers.

More classes creates a need for more teachers.

The need for more teachers means the need for more training colleges and universities. The number of people needed at all levels - schools, colleges and universities - means that people are doing the jobs without the desired experience and qualifications. So the quantity of those being educated is growing, but the quality of the teaching is at best standing still.

I thought that my experience and skills would quickly be put to use.

Even though in VSO training we are told again and again to be patient and not to expect too much at first, when you are actually here it’s difficult not to immediately have things to do. It is so different from my experience of the pressure in UK schools. I was frustrated and annoyed that my skills were being wasted. But two years on, I have so much work to do that I can’t complain at all. My advice to everyone who comes to Ethiopia is ‘be patient’ or as Ethiopians say, ‘cas per cas’ (little by little).

My placement is with the Ministry of Education.

Teachers are now expected to do continuous professional development (CPD) to upgrade their teaching skills. Working alongside other VSO volunteers, my role is to develop a new strategy for CPD.

Daily work includes designing documents, running training workshops and going on field visits around the country to monitor progress in schools. It’s a really varied work life and one that gives lots of opportunities for meeting people and traveling. We drink buna (delicious Ethiopian coffee) and eat bombalinos (Ethiopian doughnuts) when we feel the need!

We’ve just run a five-day workshop to launch the new strategy.

Five people from each of the 11 regions in Ethiopia attended, so the whole country was represented.
We invited six Ethiopian colleagues to run the CPD training alongside us. We divided up the sessions each day so that everyone got a fair chance to be a trainer. It was the most wonderful experience for us as we sat and watched our Ethiopian colleagues leading the training on the new strategy. It was very powerful and overwhelmingly emotional after two years of development.

Of course, this isn’t the only programme in the country improving teaching skills. But it is one that should reach all teachers and therefore all children. Ultimately all children in the country will get a better education.

I’d recommend volunteering to others 100 per cent.

Volunteering is the most amazing and humbling experience. It’s a wonderful way to finish a career in education.

What are you doing as a VSO volunteer in Nepal?

I’m working in the Ministry of Education and Sports in Kathmandu, in Foreign Aid Coordination.  This is the section within the Ministry that deals with donors such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and also bilateral donors like Denmark, Norway, Finland and the Department for International Development in the UK.

Why is a position like yours important to Nepal?

At the moment, education in Nepal for children is only grades one to five. They plan from 2009 that it should be grades one to eight. The demands on funding for that will be huge – at the moment, 30 per cent of the education budget is provided by donors. In some countries it’s 80 per cent, so when Nepal’s budget increases, sections like the one I work in here in the Ministry of Education and Sports will be vital.

Do you think your knowledge of schools in Britain has helped?

I find that my education experience is a big advantage in Nepal’s Ministry of Education and Sports having been on the receiving end of Government directives in England. What I think I’m able to do with the Ministry is to show them ways in which the things they want to happen in schools can happen. I help them to consider the people that will be affected by their policies: head teachers, the teachers, and the pupils.

Why do you think experience is vital in a developing country’s education system?

The important thing for Nepal is that volunteers understand education through and through.  There’s no better training ground in Britain than as a teacher or a head teacher. I know I get credibility in meetings with government officers and donors because I know what it’s like in schools. I think that people from education, in particular people who have worked in schools, will have experience that a lot of government officers lack.

How do volunteers make the most of each other’s experience?

Here in Kathmandu the education volunteers meet on a regular basis and our experience is very different.  We learn a lot. Those of us who work in government offices in the capital learn a huge amount from people who work in the field, who work in remote districts. I think there’s a big strength in VSO being vertically integrated in the country. There are people who work in schools, in district education offices and then here in the capital there are people who work at the highest level in planning and strategy and this kind of joined up working works.

Is there a social aspect to volunteering?

Put quite simply: in Britain, I don’t get invited to birthday parties of 30-year-olds, but here in Nepal, you get very close to the other volunteers. It’s partly a sense of shared predicament, but it is also partly a real pleasure in being in such a fascinating country as Nepal.

What is life like outside of your placement?

VSO understandably publicises its work in HIV and AIDS, governance, education, health, but outside of the inspirational aspect of volunteering, there are other, shall we say, unwritten benefits. In my case it’s the trekking, the tiger reserve near the Indian border, travelling to Tibet and Kerala and immersing myself in the country. I think that being able to drink in a culture and to really take advantage of where you are, in my case Nepal, is one of VSO’s best-kept secrets.

I graduated as an engineer and went straight into management consultancy.

I spent about six years managing big technology projects. Then I spent another six years working in the city where I project managed mergers and acquisitions for an Australian bank. In the late 90s, early 2000s there was a downturn in the market and we had to make about 4500 people redundant. It was a tough time, really difficult to go through. At that point I decided I needed a career change: I wanted to do something different with the skills I’d acquired as a consultant and in the city.

At that time my wife Kristenne was working in the third sector.

She asked me on occasion to volunteer at the charity she was working at. It was really good to meet people working in that sector, to find out what drove them and what their values were. I found that really compelling.

I left the bank and found a brilliant job as director of an arts charity looking after the legal and copy rights of visual creatives. Working with the chief executive and the other directors, we increased the charity’s turnover from two to eight million. I then started a Masters in voluntary sector management and became chief executive of King’s College London Student Union.  

Doing VSO was always in our minds. 

I remember watching a VSO video about ten years ago and thinking, ‘one day we’re going to do something like this.’ Kristenne and I have both progressed in our careers and we’ve decided it’s time to do something different, challenge ourselves in a new way, use our skills and knowledge outside of the career structure we’re used to.

Our VSO journey so far has been challenging but extremely positive.

Everyone has been amazingly helpful from day one. I thought VSO’s assessment day was tough. It really makes you think about why you want to volunteer, and if you’re a couple doing it together it really makes you think about your relationship and how going overseas will affect it. The questions were very pointed but pertinent; selectors were really professional but warm and friendly at the same time.

Meeting other potential volunteers has been great – we’ve made really good friends. Five of our P2V (Preparing to Volunteer) course colleagues were also on our SKWID (Skills for Working in Development) course so it has felt like a real little family!

I roped in my friends to help me with my fundraising.

My ex-city colleagues and I rode from Greenwich to Hampton Wick, crossing every single bridge and ferry crossing all the way - that was 29 river crossings and about 40 miles of cycling. With my colleagues at King’s I did a six-hour table tennis marathon: I played every person who works with me for 15 minutes. I was pretty tired after that! It was a great way of remembering everyone and doing something collectively to raise money.

In Rwanda I’ll be working with the National Federation for Disabled People (NFDP).

It’s a campaigning and advocacy organisation that represents all the Disabled People’s Organisations in Rwanda. There are around 800,000 people with disabilities in the country and there’s a massive amount of work to do in terms of getting them access to education, welfare, healthcare. The NFDP is tasked with changing law and cultural perception. 

My placement is going to start off with recruiting the executive director, which will be great. I can help the board of trustees think about the kind of director they want and the relationship will be formed right from the start. Then we can work together on governance, mentoring and coaching and building management systems. We take for granted some of the stuff we do in organisations in the UK, so it’ll be really interesting to see how transferable and relevant those tools going to be and how much adjustment I’ll need to make.

I’ve been thinking about how VSO will fit into my career.

It has taken us nearly a year from registering with VSO to actually going overseas. During that time we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about development issues, reading about the history of international development and the effect it has on local economies. For me it has really struck a chord. When we return to the UK, I think a career in international development for me would be the most ideal next step.

Why did you decide to volunteer?

I retired from teaching to look after my wife when she became ill. After she died I began to wonder, ‘what do I do now?’. I thought of VSO because we had both spent our lives trying to make a difference to the lives of other people through teaching. I thought I could keep making a difference now.

Tell me about your placement.

I am working as an Education Management Adviser in Ngoma District, which is a rural district in the east of Rwanda. To me the biggest issue in Rwandan education is the quality of teaching, so I’ve been working with head teachers of the 65 primary schools across the district to identify some strategies to help improve the methods the teachers in their schools use.

How did you do that?

One of the things I did was to set up a steering group of head teachers where we discussed what makes a good school, a good head teacher and a good teacher. Afterwards I implemented a training programme for them based on their ideas.

What else have you done?

I have also been working with another VSO volunteer, Anna MacEachern, a Basic Education Methodology Trainer who is also based in Ngoma. The district office asked us to run workshops for students at a Teacher Training College. There we showed students ways to focus on pupils’ learning and explained the importance of checking for understanding. We also showed them how to make visual aids out of cheap local resources. 

What have you discovered about education in Rwanda?

The circumstances are obviously more challenging in Rwanda in terms of resources. But there are many things that are the same: the challenge as a head teacher is always to motivate people, to develop your staff and to monitor what is going on in your school. What is very different is the teaching practice. Here there is a lot of focus on traditional teaching methods, but little on actual learning and checking for understanding. For example, the teachers will ask the children if they know the four countries that border Rwanda, the children will say yes and then the lesson will move straight on!

Is Rwanda as you expected it to be?

I’m not sure what I expected of Rwanda, but I think what I’ve found has exceeded whatever that was! When I flew into Kigali the first thing I was struck with, even from the aeroplane, was looking down and seeing well ordered roads and nice tin roofs that weren’t falling apart. That is what’s so different about Rwanda compared to the other African countries I’ve been to before – everything is so clean. Now that I’ve lived here for a bit, I also know it’s people are friendly and professional, and that outside of Kigali it is a very green and beautiful country.

Would you recommend volunteering?

I don’t think it’s right for everybody, but it’s fulfilling there is no question about that. I’ve gained an awful lot from it. It’s given me an opportunity to carry on doing what I’ve always been doing, and at the same time it has given me companionship and collegiality. I could have sat at home in my retirement, recording music and making photograph albums, but this has given me satisfaction and fulfilment and hope. I’ve still got something to give – and it’s important for me not to stop.

An unimaginable horror

In the spring of 1994, five year-old Olive Okobasingiza was playing outside her house, when a militant opened fire on her family. Her mother and brother were killed, her sister was injured and she was shot in the arm.

Olive doesn’t know what happened to her father, as he wasn’t with them that day, but she never saw him again.

Found by soldiers, she and her sister were taken to a hospital, where doctors amputated her arm. With Rwanda in the grips of a genocide that would kill 800,000 people in three months, the two girls were alone and terrified. “I had lost everything,” she says.

Two miraculous discoveries!

Sixteen years later and it’s fair to say Olive has come a long way. In fact she’s been all the way to Greece. She’s also planning to go to India in September, and to travel to the UK in 2012. Because Olive is now a Paralympian. Or to be more exact – Rwanda’s first ever female Paralympian.

After that fateful day in 1994 Olive and her sister were taken to an orphanage, where they remained until peace was restored. They were then found by an aunt who had fled across the border into Tanzania during the fighting, and have lived with her ever since.

It wasn’t long after, that somebody spotted her running around with friends, and told her she could be an athlete. “They said I had the height of someone who can run,” she explains. “And that if I tried I could be an athlete.”

Challenging preconceptions

It was difficult to believe. In a country where nine out of 10 people are subsistence farmers, disability is seen as a curse that stops individuals making a contribution to their family, meaning many disabled people are made to feel useless. But Olive refused to conform to this. She began training, and at the age of just 15 represented her country in the 200 metres at the Paralympic Games.

“People are amazed by me – they are amazed a disabled girl plays sport! she says. “And that I represent our country! I tell people that being disabled does not mean you are not capable of doing anything.”

Support from the National Paralympic Committee and VSO volunteer Nic

Unsurprisingly Olive has become a role model for girls with disabilities in Rwanda. She is keen to get as many involved in sport as possible, which she is able to do through The National Paralympic Committee of Rwanda, an organisation which not only supports international athletes like her with training and travel expenses for big competitions, but also promotes disability sports at a grass roots level across the country.

With VSO volunteer Nic Clark now working to help strengthen the management at NPC, the president plans to increase its funding. This means it can continue to support Olive, and enable more young people with disabilities to discover that like her they are capable of great things.

 “Growing up with a disability is hard.,” she says. “You don’t have self-esteem. One thing I tell young people is not to look down at themselves and just to take that risk of trying to do something.” It’s a motto we could all learn a lot from. Olive has indeed come a long, long way since 1994 – and she’s still just 21!

What does your job involve?

I’m working with the Association for Women with Disabilities (AWWD) field staff to develop systems to get information so that we can use it in reports for the donors. I’ve also been doing communications work, getting case studies from the field and using those to promote AWWD’s work and show the challenges disabled women face.

Can you describe some of those challenges?

Dealing with impairments like not being able to see or not being able to walk is difficult enough in any case, but these women have to deal with them while living in a slum or a remote rural area. So they don’t have running water, they don’t have toilets, they don’t have a kitchen, the streets are unpaved, there are open drains. Not only do they have to deal with their impairment in those circumstances, they also have to confront stigma.

What does that stigma look like?

Disabled women are often harassed or abused the street. Many are too afraid to come out of the houses, so they’re isolated for their whole lives. It’s profoundly shocking.

Is your work going to help address that?

I really hope so. I’m developing a booklet of disabled women’s stories that will help AWWD promote their work and challenge stereotypes. It’ll show the extent of the challenges faced by disabled women in the slums and in the rural areas and also show that disabled women are capable of achieving just as much as anyone else in Indian society.

What do you think of VSO’s way of working?

I really like the emphasis on sharing skills. My experience in India and Pakistan is that the NGOs are very professional in their project activities but because they are focusing on those, they often don’t have the professional expertise in organisational development. So I think volunteers can bring an awful lot in terms of building the organisation’s capacity.

What will you do when you return to the UK?

I’m going back to do a Masters in social work. Working in Pakistan and India has made me realise that I want to work directly with vulnerable groups. It has given me so many skills for working with different cultural groups, and I’d like to work with refugees and asylum seekers back in the UK. 

So do you think volunteering has been good for your CV?

It has been such good experience in terms of broadening my skills, being able to do a wide variety of work from developing communications to proposal writing to report writing.

Tell us what you’d say to someone thinking about volunteering with VSO.

I’d say definitely go for it. It’s a life changing experience – you’ll shock yourself at how much how you can cope with and what you can achieve.

Starting out in a new job can be difficult, let alone starting one in a new country and a completely different culture. How prepared did you feel?

VSO’s pre-departure training prepared us pretty well. We were told to expect to feel quite a few highs and lows – to love it at first, and then to get annoyed by everything. I do think when you arrive everything is new, and exiting, and different; and then as time goes on the things that were new and exciting start to really get on your nerves. Eventually you move through to more of an acceptance and it all starts to feel like home.

What did you find hardest to get used to in Uganda?

Uganda is really noisy - if it’s not the ‘boom boom’ of the music, it’s the generators or the dogs at night. It was quite a challenge to go to sleep at night. And the bugs! I really hated the bugs.

Any particularly unwelcome six-legged guests?

The number of times I’d come home and find a cockroach sitting on my toothbrush was a bit too much to bear at first!

How has living in Uganda been different to living in the UK?

Definitely the way animals are so integrated into daily life. Back home, you rarely see chickens and goats and cows wandering the streets, but for me it’s now normal - goats wander through my office on a daily basis! Certainly one of the highlights here are the children on my street. I live on a really small street, which is overcrowded with little shops selling charcoal and washing powder and is littered with literally hundreds of children. When they see me everyday, they say the same thing, they say ‘Muzungu! Bye, bye! Muzungu!’ and I never tire of it, I just love it and I say it back.

Has everything gone as you expected on your placement?

At the beginning I would get quite frustrated by what I saw as a lack of motivation. Nine months into my placement I have reached a level of acceptance - now I see more positives, and I’m happy when I see that the team is working together. I’ve accepted that I’m a small cog in the grand scheme of things, so although I’m not going to make big changes like I had initially hoped, if I can make just a small change then great.

What have you learned about international development through VSO?

I think it’s important to realise that development is not just about bringing money in from overseas, it’s about building local staff capacity so that organisations can raise money for themselves, both locally and internationally.

Are there any skills that you have picked up that will be useful in the future?

I’ve moved into a managerial role since I’ve been here which is something I’ve never done back home, so I think that in itself has been a really good experience for me, and possibly one I could use when I return home.

What would you say to someone about to do VSO?

I think if I had to give any advice, it would be to be realistic about what you hope to achieve, and remember that small changes count, they really do.

It’s a scorching June afternoon in a rural village in Miirya sub-county, Uganda. In the cool shade of a tree, VSO nurse Pam Llewellyn uses brightly illustrated posters and the help of Sally, her colleague and translator, to train village health volunteers in malaria infection and prevention.

How we catch malaria...

“Mrs Anopheles, the female mosquito, bites you at night-time when you are sleeping and transfers the malaria parasite into your body,” explains Pam, with Sally translating as they hold their first poster aloft.  “She comes to make a meal to feed her eggs.”

The second poster features a cartoon of the malaria parasite making its way to the liver; in poster three it is busy reproducing itself. And so the session goes on. It ends with poster seven, which stresses the life-saving difference sleeping under an insecticide treated mosquito net can make.

...and how we can prevent it

Next there’s a practical demonstration of how to hang up a net. The afternoon’s training ends with everyone standing up to sing The Malaria Song: the verses describe the symptoms and the chorus is another reminder to sleep under a net. 

Stephen is one of the volunteers Pam has been training. Before he met her, he and his family hated sleeping under mosquito nets because they were too restrictive and claustrophobic on hot nights. But the consequences were serious – and expensive.

 “I was having a lot of problems with my family, a lot of malaria, and there were a lot of expenses as I was having to transport my family to hospital,” remembers Stephen.  “But with Pam’s education and being told how important it is, now we won’t sleep without nets! And we have no more malaria.”

100 volunteers spread the word in rural villages

Newly equipped with expertise in preventing malaria, Pam’s volunteers – nearly 100 of them, distinctive in their blue t-shirts - will return to their villages and promote the use of insecticide treated mosquito nets. They’ll show their communities how to tuck their nets tightly under their sleeping mats and how to tie them up during the day so that they don’t get ripped. The volunteer will warn their communities against washing their nets too often so as not to dilute the insecticide.

Some families in the village will tell the volunteers that they can’t afford nets. They usually cost around £3, so are beyond the reach of the average Ugandan. But the volunteers will happily contradict them. With the help of friends and family back in the UK, Pam and fellow VSO volunteer Dr Chris Jary have raised enough money to buy thousands of nets. They then sell them at the subsidised price of £1. Selling the nets is better than giving them away because people value them more and will look after them. The money is invested into the project to buy more nets.

Miirya beats malaria

Nearly 5,000 nets have been distributed so far. That means thousands of lives have been saved. And the word is out: nets are now in demand. “The thing I’m most proud of is that we’re no longer having to persuade people to buy nets,” says Pam. “People in Miirya are asking for them – they understand their value and they want them. That is a lovely feeling.”

Take a look at our gallery of Pam's work in Uganda. 

Growing up in South Africa

Children growing up in informal settlements face challenges everyday, often without parents, food on the table and surrounded by the encroaching threat of crime, drugs, drink and unsolicited sex. It takes a lot for children to make it to school everyday, let alone to enjoy the experience. 

One young girl growing up in this world is Nonhlanhla Motjebela, aged 13 and her two siblings, Comfort, 6 and Matema, 11. They live with their mother and aunt in a one-bedroom shack in the heart of Atteridgeville, Pretoria. Their mother is HIV positive and battling with the dire impact of untreated TB, she cannot work and the family are struggling to survive on the good will of neighbours. 

Children on the Move

Local organisation Children on the Move was founded in 2000 to help children like Nonhlanhla. They run a successful drop-in centre in Atteridgeville, where around 300 children can grow as young people, feel cared for and make the most of a wealth of opportunities such as; free meals, informal lessons, help with homework, social service visits and health advice.

The success of Children on the Move has been supported by VSO volunteer Mary Njuguna. Mary has helped to strengthen the flourishing organisation to ensure more children can attend. Children on the Move director, Dan Lephoko said, “The help of VSO and Mary has been tremendous. She has raised funds, trained staff and assists with small grants in the community.” Mary’s work led to the funding of the centre’s very first container. A humble looking corrugated container, normally associated with haulage, is now a popular community centre for early childhood development always in use by the community.

A home from home

Nonhlanhla and her siblings were referred to the centre last year, and now they are finally able to be children again. At home she still cleans, cooks and looks after her siblings, but thanks to Mary and Children on the Move, negotiations with her school means that she now goes to school for free, and at the centre she looks forward to a nutritious packed lunch and a hot dinner. What she likes best about the centre are the lessons and she now plays the guitar. She explained, “I have lots of friends at the centre, I come here everyday, to get lunch and to have fun. When I come here I am livelier, happier and my school work is better because I can eat and get support, with the centre there is always somewhere to go”.

A summer of football

With such progress, Children on the Move director, Dan Lephoko, says he is concerned by the uninvited challenges the World Cup may bring. However, he explained steps are being taken to ensure children and guardians know of the potential dangers which may become more pervasive across the townships.

For Nonhlanhla, she is looking forward to the summer of football, but more importantly cannot wait to see where her education can take her. She enthuses, “my favourite subject is English, but I want to be a scientist, but I not sure what kind yet!” She is sure of one thing - finding out what kind of career she could have is going to be an exciting journey.  

What did you do before volunteering with VSO?

Most of my working life has been in the Third Sector, in community development and regeneration. About three and a half years ago I gave up my full-time job as director of a locally based regeneration organisation in Leeds because I wanted to do more hands-on work that interested me. Volunteering abroad was always at the back of my mind. I had worked in Ghana in my 20s, and I went back in 2006 to see if I could cope with life there and found that I still loved it. But you have to wait for the right moment!

What made you decide it was the right moment?

I knew that I was not ready to put my feet up – I still wanted a bit of adventure and challenge. I wanted to give back something to Africa because working in Ghana had given me so much – and at least now I had experience of developing projects and managing organisations to contribute. Filling in the VSO application forms and going to the assessment day felt like big steps, as I knew I would find it hard to leave my grandchildren if I was accepted.

What were your expectations of Ethiopia?

I did not have any very clear expectations of Ethiopia. Like anyone who watched TV in the mid-1980s, I had seen the shocking images of the famine, so I was surprised at how green Southern Ethiopia, where I work, can be. I am disturbed by the poverty – the number of children who sleep on the streets, who are hungry and have no one caring for them. I am also humbled by committed Ethiopians, particularly young people, who search for practical solutions to these problems.

Explain a little about the organisation you work with.

The SHAFON (Southern Nationalities Nations and People’s Region HIV and AIDS Forum of NGOs) is a small NGO with more than 75 member organisations, including associations of people living with HIV and AIDs, youth associations, faith-based and community-based organisations, development associations and international NGOs. SHAFON’s role is to help build capacity in member organisations, to aid communication among them and between NGOs and Government bodies, and to assist with networking and partnership formation.

What is your role?

My title is Fundraising Adviser and I have helped with developing funding proposals and lots of other things as well. I have visited member organisations in different parts of the region, helped develop a directory of member organisations, organised training, written guidelines on monitoring and evaluation, written and edited articles for the quarterly newsletter and website, taken part in experience-sharing trips, drafted and analysed questionnaires… and so it goes on! No two days are ever the same!
 

What do you feel is your greatest achievement?

I have helped the SHAFON to get resources for more staff to support member organisations – which is where the important work takes place. Some people tell me that just being interested in their work and supportive of them and their users makes a difference to their morale and motivation, and I have helped some small organisations access some additional funding. One example is Fiker Behiwot, which is the only association of orphaned young people and children in Ethiopia, and was set up by seven 17 years-olds – all orphans themselves. The founding members, now aged 22, form the management committee and undertake most of the work. Their participation in the SHAFON has given them a higher profile, introduced them to other organisations and possible funding sources, and helped them access training.

Would you recommend volunteering to others?

I recognise that volunteering in a developing country is not for everyone and it is important to acknowledge that there are challenges – we all miss family and friends, have to adjust to new ways of doing things and do not achieve all that we would like to! In spite of the challenges, it has definitely been an enriching experience for me. I have learned and am learning so much and feel very privileged to work alongside Ethiopian colleagues, and to have been welcomed into people’s lives and homes. It has also been stimulating to be part of the volunteer community, with people of different experiences, ages and countries of origin. I’m sure that some friendships made here with Ethiopians and with volunteers will last for the rest of my life.
 

A taste of Africa leads to a sabbatical with VSO

I went to Ghana a few summers back with Girlguiding Scotland. I loved every minute of it and decided that I wanted more. One of my friends had recently applied for VSO and told me all about it. I sent away for an application and eventually filled it in about three months later. My school and council were great; my head teacher told me to go for it. It was agreed that I could take 19 months’ leave and return to my school after my placement.

Adapting to life in Malawi

Upon arriving in Malawi we were given a week’s intensive training by VSO. This included language training, although I didn’t really need to learn the local language as I was mainly speaking in English. I stayed with another volunteer for my first few weeks, which was great as she had been in the country for nine months – she really showed me the ropes and helped me out with the culture. The people I worked with were also fab and helped me get into the swing of things.  

Malawi is a really beautiful place and the people are so warm and friendly. I loved the relaxed lifestyle and the fact that people and families come before work. So many people have such difficult lives and money and food are always constant challenges, yet they would have given me the food from their own plate (and often did). They really made me feel welcome.

Improving the quality of education

My job title in Malawi was Continuing Professional Development Facilitator. I was mainly working with primary education advisers (PEAs) – they’re in charge of the professional development of teachers in up to 18 schools in their area. I was helping the PEAs to improve their teacher development centres, which are purpose built buildings that demonstrate best practise. Teachers visit the centres to borrow books, attend training sessions and get inspiration for good teaching resources.

My role also involved designing and facilitating training sessions. These covered setting up school libraries, record keeping, producing and using teaching materials, management styles, special educational needs and subject based workshops for maths, science and language. For many attendees these participatory sessions were a totally new experience: they were used to just being talked at.

While I was there, Malawi was rolling out a new curriculum that aimed to change teaching methods, making them much more user friendly. There was a strong emphasis on participatory methods and for some teachers this was a real change, as ‘chalk and talk’ was the only method they’d ever experienced. I supported teachers and PEAs in using the new curriculum and adopting new ways of working – things like splitting children into small groups in order to make large classes more manageable. 

Challenges

I was based in Rumphi, with is in the north of Malawi and I was also covering the districts for Mzimba North and Mzimba South – a pretty big area! I was travelling long distances on my motorbike initially and then by car – not easy in the rainy season with mud, mud and more mud!

Dealing with time management could be very challenging. I’d turn up at a meeting and have to wait for two hours before others came along to join me. But I did learn pretty quickly to deal with it and even find it a bonus if the meeting started only 30 minutes late!

Caroline’s impact

I feel that I did make an impact, especially to the people that I worked more closely with. I worked hard to encourage the schools and advisers to learn from each other and to exchange ideas instead of going it alone. For some this was a really difficult thing to do and it took time to get them to share their ideas, but in the end they all saw the benefits of it. I think that modelling behaviour – or acting as I would do anyway – gave people a positive role model to follow. I received lots of little comments on my good time keeping skills, my ability to admit to being wrong and to ask for help when I needed it – all things that are rare among people in rural Malawi.

I’m sure that my own skills have developed more than those of the people I was working with and I’ve learnt more from the whole experience then they have from me. My skills in facilitating have improved with all of the training that I conducted and I have learnt to work more as a team player (which I actually found quite difficult before). 

Coming home

Since returning home I’ve been lucky enough to go back into my previous job. I’ve been busy linking our school with one in Malawi and have sent lots of letters and video clips back and forth. The school I’m working in is keen to develop our international global education, which the children have been really enjoying and benefiting from.

I would definitely recommend volunteering – you gain so much and get to meet so many diverse, wonderful people. It really is a life changing experience.

NomFundo's story  

At 15 NomFundo has already had to fight hard for her education. She says, “I was born in Durban; my mother was a prostitute and couldn’t afford to take me to school. She started bringing her clients home to work in the one room we had, where I would have to sleep”.  Luckily, one of her mothers friends decided this was no life for NomFundo and she was re-housed at children’s shelter, The House, Johannesburg at the age of 12. Here she could attend school and passed her national education exams in 2006.

Moving forward with SCORE

This fresh start was strengthened by the work of VSO volunteer, Clare Barrell and local partner SCORE. SCORE work across the whole of South Africa helping to change lives through sport. Their aim is to get everyone, especially women and girls, taking part in sport and having the opportunity to access counselling and care.

NomFundo explains, “Clare came and introduced SCORE to us, and bought along coach Mike, who began to teach us how to play football”. She explains further, “when I first arrived I didn’t like to join in, but thanks to SCORE and Mike, I made friends and most importantly could talk to someone about my past”. 

Coach Mike Soke, 52, is one for twenty ex-professional football players from SCORE’s Soccer Legends project who deliver football training three times a week to children from shelters and schools in the Johannesburg area. The football training is supported by care and counselling, delivered by volunteers such as Clare, which focuses on life and leadership skills. 

Football for life  

Mike, was a professional footballer since he was 20 years old, and played for South Africas Orlando Pirates. After retiring in 1990, he married had a family, and retrained as an estate agent. He was motivated to come out of retirement by the offer of retraining with SCORE. He explains, “I became a community coach after training with former Dutch coach Frank Rijkaart and SCORE, I am now a qualified community coach, working with children from the disadvantaged Hillbrow area. Its great to see them enjoy football and give them hope”.

NomFundos bright future

NomFundo is also looking to her own future as she is now a care worker at The House, taking girls just like her to school, helping them with homework and trying to reunite troubled families similar to hers to talk through their problems. 

She is proud that SCORE can help girls like her at The Shelter, “before the girls would just lie and lash out when asked about the past, but now we can discover the truth and help these girls”.

NomFundo is still trying to reconcile her own past, but insists on looking to the future and says that her wish is that, “I can move forward and be free, the past shouldn’t hold me back”.

It was December in 2008 and I had left my son at home with his two sisters when I went out for work. When I came back in the evening I asked the young ones “where has Omar gone?”. They said, "oh Mummy, we don’t know where he has gone, maybe he is playing?" So immediately I started looking for him.

I tried to look in the places he usually plays but he was nowhere to be seen. I then reported it to police and put announcements over the radios but we spent the whole night without seeing him. In the morning we got a call on the phone. Two women had found Omar dumped on a roadside in Mukono, a suburb of Kampala far from here. He was crying and semi conscious and craving water to drink.

We went to recover the boy from Mukono and he told us the story: 

“Mummy, I was playing near our home. Then a boda-boda [a bicycle taxi] man came and picked me up and tricked me, he called me by my name and said: "your mother Vivien is calling you". So I climbed on the boda-boda and off we went but after a short while I noticed he was taking another route, not the route to your work. Then I told the man ‘it seems you are stealing me’ but the man now increased the speed and took me to unknown destination.”

So he described that they went to what seemed to be a shrine. There was a woman there who removed his clothes to examine him and said “this boy will not make a sacrifice because he is already circumcised.” That was when they put something sweetly scented towards his nose and immediately he fell asleep. Then he woke up in Mukono, far away from the shrine.

Help from the ANPPCAN

The police immediately started their investigations. This led to the arrests of the suspects and police called all the journalists to come. The following day unknown people started coming to my home but they could not identify themselves as journalists – they looked strange. So I took the boy away to an uncle’s place. But still unknown people were coming and the uncle said, “we can’t keep that boy anymore because we’re scared, we see different faces peeping in the windows, behind the houses.” It seemed like they want to re-kidnap the boy.

I reported this to the police and they said they were processing it, but processes can be slow. Then a friend told me about ANPPCAN and I ran immediately there.

When I reached ANPPCAN reception they greeted me warmly. They interviewed me and I told them the story and immediately they gave me help. They agreed with the police that they would give my son security and they took him to a safe place. Psychological torture was at a maximum and they gave him counselling and me too.

Once ANPPCAN intervened, the process was very smooth. The police were no longer dodging me, everything was just straight. When the case came to court, ANPPCAN helped me very, very much. I didn’t know the process of the court, I didn’t know who they called the prosecutor, I didn’t know all the terms. But the ANPPCAN lawyer would go inside the offices and check that everything was moving. I highly appreciate it because there was no corruption once ANPPCAN was there on my behalf. If it was not for ANPPCAN I don’t think I would have managed.

Speaking out

My son is still in a safe place. He has post-traumatic stress disorder. When he sees a stranger he runs away, he hides himself. There is some deterioration in his studies – he has been receiving an interim education in the safe place but now I want him to be back in school like other children.

I think it is important for people in other countries to know things that are going on in Uganda. The people who sacrifice children have an intention, and it may not end in Uganda- they may go abroad even to England. So I’m appealing to people all over the world that even a friend or brother or sister can do something bad to a child. So everyone should keep an eye on his or her family.

 All names have been changed.

ANPPCAN is currently receiving support from VSO volunteer Elena Lomeli. She is sharing her communications and marketing expertise with ANPPCAN to help them raise their profile in Uganda, so that more children and families will know who to turn to when they need support.

Could you tell us about what SCORE does in South Africa?

SCORE works across the whole of South Africa helping to change lives through sport. We aim to get everyone in vulnerable communities, especially women and girls, taking part in sport. SCORE runs a huge range of activities, from the highly successful Soccer Legends programme, where retired coaches teach kids football at shelters, to volunteers like myself going into schools and providing counselling and care. I also manage SCORE’s other volunteers from around the world in the 44 communities we run programmes in.

What is an average day like for you as a VSO volunteer?

An average day is crazy; I don’t think my feet have touched the ground since I have been here! It’s hard work, but it is incredibly inspiring. One highlight has been our 2009 World Aids Day celebration in Johannesburg. I managed the event and over 800 disadvantaged kids from the Hillbrow district came together to play football and train with the South African national team coach, they also took part in performances, workshops and had a great day outside Hillbrow. 

How did you come to be involved with VSO?

I had known about VSO for years, but I always thought I was a bit young to do it. I was lucky because I came across the placement first. Because it dealt with sport it looked really up my street after I studied sport at University, plus I had been to South Africa before, working for a small NGO so it felt right. When I was accepted it was fantastic because I knew it was all leading up to this placement.

What do you love about South Africa and what were your first impressions of the country?

I have been here for around two years now, when I arrived my knowledge was a bit idealistic. I remember getting out of the taxi where I was staying and not knowing if I could even walk in the street. Then two days later I was in a rural community in the Limpopo Province, were chickens were being slaughtered in the yard and there was no running water – there was no time for a culture shock. Initially everything was crazy, the noises, the colour, but now it is very much part of my life, I don’t know what it will be like to go home to quiet Hertfordshire.

What advice would you give to other young people considering volunteering?

I think young people don’t just want to go travelling for the sake of travelling, and for me it was always about doing something that I felt was worthwhile. I did not want to be involved with anything where I was paying for the privilege of volunteering. VSO represents the proper way to go into communities; it has the right links in countries and works with people that are known for doing a good job. If you want to work for something that is really sustainable then VSO is the way to do it, if you just want to party all the time, then it is absolutely not. It is hard work, but you’re motivated by other people, that has been truly special, no one can take that away.

Her expertise will be put to excellent use improving the care available to people who are living with mental illnesses as a result of years of civil war and the 2004 Tsunami.

Here she reveals her hopes and fears about her upcoming placement.

I spent just over two years in Nepal with VSO nearly ten years ago.

When I returned to the UK I always had the intention of applying again and going to a different country to expand on my previous experience. I’m now coming up for retirement and I think that my new placement will provide a fantastic transition between the end of my career and the start of retirement.

I had quite a lot of mixed feelings about my first VSO experience.

I’m not sure that the placement fulfilled its potential, and I feel like now I have much more to offer. I will be going with a very different attitude and with very different expectations, and I think it will be a better experience both for Sri Lanka and for me. I’m very curious about what will happen. 

One of the things I like most about VSO is its sustainable approach to development.

Its aim is to support and strengthen projects and systems that will have a longer-lasting impact. My placement will give me the opportunity to live with local people, understand their needs and build up long lasting relationships. That’s central to VSO’s philosophy, and that’s what appeals to me so much.

My employer, the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, has established a link with VSO.

It supports its employees in taking a career break and seeing international development work as part of their career with the Trust. My colleagues now have a great opportunity to spend a year working in developing countries but also return to their jobs – although I’ve decided I’ll probably retire when I get back.

I will be taking over from a VSO volunteer who has now returned to the UK.

She initiated phase one of the project and I will be carrying out phase two, working with a team of psychiatrists, occupational therapists and a psychiatric social worker. I am definitely looking forward to working with a group of people who are working towards the same aim and I think that will provide a great source of support.

Negotiation, flexibility and sensitivity are key skills I will put into practice.

The structure of the organisation is likely to be different to ones I’m used to, and I will make sure I take that into consideration along with the limited resources available. Part of my role will involve taking transferable training skills and knowledge, but I think I will also learn from people who are already working there. There is an awful lot that can be gained from looking at how the system already operates and exists.

One of my greatest fears is ‘Can I do it?’.

I’m also nervous at learning a new language as it isn’t my forte, but I hope I will be able to learn and communicate in a way that’s going to be effective.

I’d advise anyone thinking of volunteering to head to the VSO website for more information or have a chat with a returned volunteer.

People might feel that they couldn’t possibly volunteer, but when they understand the reality it becomes a bit easier and they realise that they can adapt to it and they most definitely have something to offer.

What work do you do as an early childhood education adviser?

I’ve been helping with the implementation of the literacy hour in grades one and two, which is a fairly new initiative in Guyana. I’ve worked with parents and teachers to ensure that they’re equipped with the skills to implement the new programmes. My role changes every couple of months as we see progress taking place.

Describe your average day

My average day consists of a lot of travelling! I normally try to visit at least two schools every day. I could be going into school and meeting with the head teacher, liaising with one or more teachers, maybe doing some team teaching or a demonstration lesson. There’s lots of discussion and sharing ideas. It’s very varied.

What would you say has been your greatest achievement to date? 

I don’t have one greatest achievement but I see small achievements every day which when combined are enormous. For example I had a grade seven class who couldn’t write their names when I began working with them. They didn’t know the letters of the alphabet. Now, two terms on, these children are reading, they can write sentences and short stories. They are coming back to school where once they didn’t want to attend. I think that’s been a huge achievement.

What new skills will you take back to the UK?

Heaps of new skills! Improved communication skills. You’re always trying to persuade people to do things differently and you have to communicate in a way where you’re not going to offend. You have to make sure that you clearly understand the situation before you advise.  I also think I’m more resourceful now. I’m able to build relationships. I don’t think I quite envisaged how much advising I would be doing in terms of working with teachers and trainers and so on. Those skills have been hugely important.

What have you learnt from Guyanese teachers?

I think a greater empathy and a greater understanding of the challenges they face. In Guyana teachers are teaching in hugely difficult circumstances and they do a great job. It’s just about assisting them to make the most of their time in the classroom and the few resources they have here to be able to bring children forward. It’s a two-way process so you learn from them and they learn from you. I think it’s important to listen for a long time when you start your placement with VSO. It’s all about listening. 
 

What are the highs and lows of life as a VSO volunteer?

The travelling can be quite tiring, but it’s necessary in this region because it’s so big. It can also seem a bit lonely at first until you start building up relationships. But there are many more highs than lows. The Guyanese people are wonderful; they are very generous. I have lots of good friends here. I like the hustle and bustle of Guyana - the noises, the smells, the weather and the food. Everything. Just being in a new culture and being accepted by a new community is great.

What would you say to other teachers who are thinking of volunteering with VSO?

I’d say, “Do it”! It’s the best two years that I’ve had. I’ve learnt so much. I think that I’ve made some impact in the job that I’ve been doing. And I’ve never looked back and never regretted it once.

It’s 4.00pm in Tanzania and school has finished for the day. But all over the country, groups of teenagers are still sitting in their classrooms. It’s not detention. It’s not extra maths. What these teenagers are talking about is far more interesting.

“We talk about puberty, sexuality, different lifestyles, emotions and problems we face in every day life,” says Rebeca Gyumi, who lives in Dar es Salaam. “You find in the club you can discuss most things comfortably, things that you wouldn’t discuss with your parents.”

Rebeca is referring to the Fema Club, where students get together to discuss the latest edition of Fema, an innovative magazine produced by Femina Health Information Project (HIP). Femina HIP is a non-governmental organisation promoting healthy lifestyles among young people in Tanzania through magazines like Fema, a TV talk show, a radio programme and the Internet.

HIV and AIDS prevention messages play a key role in all of Femina HIP’s initiatives. And these messages are getting through. “Before I joined the Fema group, I thought HIV education was something that I didn’t need to know about. I thought I was too young,” says Rebeca. “But through the club I have seen that HIV involves young people as well – we are part and parcel of it. It’s not only you that can get HIV, but also us.”

Femina HIP staff member Bahati Mdtele says: “We know from feedback from our readers that we are changing a lot of Tanzanian young people. They say ‘through Fema I’ve changed, I was going with so many girls but because of Fema I use condoms, I protect myself.’’’

Much of Femina HIP’s success in changing young people’s attitudes is attributable to its participatory, ‘edutainment’ approach.

“It’s not about telling people how to live their lives,” explains CUSO-VSO volunteer Lynn O’Rourke, who has spent the last two years sharing her expertise in graphic design and production with her colleagues at Femina HIP. “The content of our magazines and shows comes from our journalists going out into communities, listening to what real people say and reporting back, using real case studies and testimonials and stories, featuring role models and allowing people to talk about their realities and find their own solutions.”

The resulting material is lively, honest and informative. It’s unsurprising that Femina HIP has become a popular lifestyle brand for young people throughout the country. And with Fema magazine being distributed in 1,500 schools and discussed and debated by 450 Fema clubs, some of which number up to 100 students, Femina HIP is undoubtedly playing a crucial role in slowing the spread of HIV and AIDS in Tanzania.