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90 days ago
Some things I have learned: 1. Most important thing is to find people and organizations that are motivated and that you can work with, for education volunteers there are plenty of teachers that you will not be able to work with. So learn to identify the people and areas you can help in and avoid wasting time doing things which do not bring you joy because these things will mostly just bring you frustration and not much else. 2. Adjusting to the community takes time more so than anything else, it will not happen overnight. 3. Learning even a little bit of the local language goes a long way towards smoothing social relationships, but beyond beginner level it is up to you how much you want to use it. 4. Maintaining connections with other volunteers is important. 5. You will probably have a lot of “spare time” learn to do things to occupy yourself: lots of people develop into cooks, learn another language, write poems, start personal gardens, read tons of ...
90 days ago
Last weekend was the second of two camps funded by a VAST grant, the first had more of an HIV/AIDS focus, this second was more about camping for the sake of camping, though we did graduate five more kids as peer educators, adding up to ten total with over twenty kids receiving the HIV/AIDS training and an introduction to Scouts. There have been a lot of challenges in getting this group started, I have been learning as I go along, not really having any background in youth work, but I feel like we are really taking off. We have a few core kids who are very motivated, a membership of around thirty to forty in two villages, a few projects and activities that we are working on… So on the whole I feel that it is going very well, and I believe it has a future after I leave. Other than that, I recently returned from my brother’s wedding in America which was an excellent experience, I was only there for two weeks so it wasn’t too hard coming back to South Africa. Not a whole lot ...
146 days ago
This week Scouts Thomo/Giyani were able to have their first camp. The camp was funded by the VAST program of Peace Corps and USAID with funding and facillitation provided by Keep the Dream an NGO which has fostered the Scout movement into a very large youth group in north-eastern limpopo. Twenty two kids were able to come, about half from my group in my village and half new scouts. They participated in activities which which taught them about scouting and camping. A highlight was the campfire on night two when they had a chance to sing campfire songs and to plan their own songs and dances. The theme of the camp was to educate the participants to be HIV/AIDS peer educators, giving them sufficient knowledge about HIV/AIDs, its prevention and its impact to provide information to their peers. While I think all of the scouts learned a lot about the virus that they did not know, only seven qualified to be peer educators. Fortunately there will be another camp. It was quite cold at the camp ...
