If you think students spend all their spare time avoiding studying, going out with their mates and having a good time then you'd be right. Well our student bloggers do anyway. While they assure us they don't slack on the study, they've got a lot to answer for when it comes to enjoying themselves while volunteering.

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Wednesday Dec 10, 2008

Pre-Christmas Ramble

 

  Just a short update before my term finally ends and I return home to Scarborough – where I can still get some meals cooked for me. Get in.

  Staving off the nihilistic rage, I have been doing a bit of flyering for the winter volunteering opportunities I mentioned in my last blog. It's quite enjoyable really - you watch people squirm to get away from you, some outright ignoring you, and others regarding you suspiciously as they walk by. Of course, most people just take the flyer, and some are even a bit enthusiastic about it.

  I tried to be as friendly as I could be, and not to shove anything in front of people's faces. The entrance into our union at Shef Uni is (probably like most unions) like a crowded maze of people trying to hand you things, usually advertising the latest night of drinking under oddly disconcerting names – Carnage, Brain Damage, Liver Cancer (ok I made that one up) etc.

  As I was flyering for volunteering I thought that a) this was ok, and b) it should be done in a different way to the profit making promotions around us. So I tried to only give flyers to people who had first said that they were interested, although I did stop everyone who past me and asked if they were in fact interested.

  My mate thinks differently. He cited Red Nose Day and Comic Relief as getting money for people who need it by forcing the issue – a TV version of shoving a flyer in your face and saying people need your money (ok, maybe a little more subtle). Otherwise, he said, they simply wouldn't get the funds needed to help.

  So should volunteering, and more especially fundraising, become profit driven? Is it simply the higher cash taken = the better job done. This is definitely Oxfam's way of looking at things.

 Or should we keep in mind the fact that a lot of the problems we want to help are possibly linked to everyone's exuberance for chasing money (homelessness, poverty, even mental health issues)?   

--

On a lighter and better note, David Blunkett recently announced that he's keen to see people from 16-25 years old do a period of 'intensive' volunteering for at least 6 months, to bind us all together (obviously). My friend spotted this gem in the article:

When asked whether the scheme should become a form of compulsory national service Mr Blunkett replied: "It's been reinforced to me in the last year that you can't have volunteering unless it's voluntary."

Gold Star for David.

Posted by Harry ( 12:27 AM )
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Friday Dec 05, 2008

Chinatown....

Sorry it's been a while – luckily I can blame it on my new job, which annoyingly means I have less time to volunteer, and the cold, which makes me type really slowly...!

As the weeks have gone by in Marie Curie I got to grips with the demon till and unleashed a plague of incorrect change and incoherent beepings upon the unsuspecting customers. Add to this the fact that the steamer, which we use to make sure everything is pressed and beautiful before it goes on the shop floor was making the lights fuse and the customers flee for daylight and an idea of the weekly mayhem starts to emerge!

Finally, just as things started to quiet down, I slid a box of patterned china plates off the desk.... Seeming to fall in slow motion, the fragmented pieces of white china covered in curling yellow daffodils cascaded to the floor in an avalanche and swept from the till to the window display at the far end of the shop. For a long moment everything was silent – customers turned round, I looked at the mess and the customers looked at me. I was totally frozen in embarrassed horror but just as I was wishing the floor would open and swallow me a voice behind me said, 'We'll have to think of a nickname for you now' and everybody started to laugh.

Suddenly there was a long queue at the till and everyone was sympathising and making jokes and teasing. The china was marked from a 30 piece set to a 22 and the day went on, broken plates being rapidly overshadowed by the memories of another volunteer who told us how when in her twenties, she and her friends had travelled across the country by train every time a ship came in and spent the day going about with the sailors!! Now in her seventies and dosed on steroids (or 'stair-rods' as one regular calls them), her tales of how her grandmother had greeted her boyfriends by looking at the label inside their coat had us all doubled up, helpless with laughter.

If you want to look at volunteering in a local Marie Curie shop in your area have a look at the website, which has vacancies for fundraising, admin and other kinds of volunteering too.

Posted by Olivia ( 3:00 PM )
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Sunday Nov 23, 2008

It's Christmas. Again.

 
It's getting seriously cold now, my friend tried to type out his essay wearing gloves earlier today (I'm not joking!), and none of us can work out how to bleed the radiators in our freezing, non-insulated house. Apparently this lack of bleeding is why, every morning, the radiator in my room heats up, ever so slightly, at the bottom – providing the faintest insight as to what life might be like with a fully functioning radiator. Imagine that.

Anyway, that digression links neatly into the fact that Christmas is coming, the annual 'BNP membership list leakage' has already happened and also, there are lots of opportunities to help out and showcase largesse anywhere you'd like over the festive period.

In Sheffield the Uni's Volunteer Committee are running a four day publicity event called 'Winter Warmers', just to make sure that everyone is aware of what opportunities are out there for anyone interested. I'm even thinking of joining in. And I hate Christmas.

Here are some of the things going on in Sheffield, just to give any of you a taster as to what might be available in your area:

• Christmas Gifts Appeal: "Brighten up Christmas for the local homeless, families fleeing domestic violence, refugees and asylum seekers by preparing them a gift"
• Christmas Party: "Get into the party spirit this Christmas by helping to run activities, supervise dodgem cars and prepare a buffet for children suffering from life limiting illnesses and their siblings."
• Santa 5k: "In aid of Amy's Retreat, why not lend a hand (register runners, hand out costumes etc), or enter as a runner (£5 entry fee).  Free Santa outfit provided!"
• Homeless and Rootless at Christmas (HARC): "Help provide food and entertainment to guests at this city-centre shelter for homeless and vulnerable people over Christmas & New Year"
I'm seriously considering the 5k run in a Santa costume. Of course, to check any events going on in your area you can use the Do-It database search or alternatively get in touch with your local Volunteer Centre

and they will be able to find you something no doubt.

Maybe I'll be able to get some pictures up of someone hating Christmas whilst simultaneously doing a 5k run in a Santa costume haha.

  

Posted by Harry ( 12:22 AM )
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Tuesday Nov 04, 2008

Tea and giggles

Hi! I’m Olivia, I live in Belfast and I volunteer in a Marie Curie Charity Shop, which is the centre of the local community. Some people come in once and never again and some come in every day wanting a red handbag or a cut glass bowl; asking if things would suit Jenny or Sarah, when none of us knows who Jenny or Sarah is!

On my first shift an elderly volunteer with misty blue eyes, lowered her cup of tea and exclaimed to the assembled company – ‘The only reason people volunteer in this shop is because they have nothing better to do!’ There was a moment of stunned and awkward silence as everyone turned to glance nervously in my direction in case I felt in some way insulted and in an instant we were all helpless with laughter, shaking our mugs of tea and slopping the contents! There was the new girl (me) at 21, the manager, in her forties, a regular leaning against the doorway between the shop and the back room, in her sixties and the straight talker, in her seventies, all roaring with laughter in the little room filled with bags of clothes and boxes of china, books and Barbie dolls.

Later, that lady would receive her five-year badge in a little ceremony of presentation and flowers and she had been working there for five years for the same reasons that saw us all there on a Saturday morning - because we all want to raise money for the extraordinary work of Marie Curie Cancer Care in their hospices, in providing free nursing care to allow people the choice to spend their last moments at home, and in carrying out research to improve care and treatment for patients. We were there because there are few people today who have not known someone affected by cancer and because we all want even in a small way, for a few hours a week, to stand alongside the doctors and nurses, the scientists, the administrators and managers, as part of this organisation and its work.

But what kept us there was exactly those hysterical moments; the banter and the craic. Even my disastrous first encounters with the demon till were greeted with laughter and sympathy in equal measure! One member of staff, formerly in the army, said that she avoided it at all costs, which explains why when she, finding herself the only one on the shop-floor with a queue forming shouts ‘TILL!’ at the top her voice, which makes everyone else giggle until they reach her and then loudly declare their intention of killing her – regularly bringing down the house.

The charity shop is not only a miniature production line in which clothes come in, are sorted, hung, steamed, priced, displayed, sold, culled, but a permanent car boot sale, an antiques store, a meeting place, a treasure trove, a comedy show, an agony aunt, and a community lifeline for people alone. It is always filled with characters, with drama and incident; where the joys and sorrows of multiple lives are played out to laughter, (elbows on a counter covered in glass bowls and tea sets) over cream buns and mugs of tea.

More soon…..

Olivia x

Posted by Olivia ( 4:59 PM )
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Monday Nov 03, 2008

Selfish Altruism?

On the 24^th October I completed the Spiderwalk – a 26 mile walk around the Sheffield area, starting at 9pm - along with other members of the Volunteering Committee. Its aim was to raise money for charity, although there seems to be some uncertainty as to which charity all the money is going to. Nonetheless money has been raised and the event was great fun, if a little gruelling.

The first 23 miles or so went absolutely fine as we wandered out of the city and into the quiet countryside of the Peak District. Generally we were all feeling good but then, with only 3 miles to go, my body started to tell me that it didn't like walking constantly for 7 hours, at a time when it was usually sleeping. This seemed to be the message most people were getting at this time and two of our group had to drop out with the end almost in sight.

 Thankfully the rest of us managed to keep going and for the second year in a row I was one of the last to cross the finish line! The event was organised by Sheffield Rag, and there are RAG (Raising And Giving) events held throughout the country – organised by students. (What is RAG?)

Aside from this I have had my first training session for my role as one of the publicity officers for the Sheffield Uni's Volunteering Committee. It's been quite interesting getting to grips with what they do and how all these committees work but I am still a relative newbie so hopefully I will be more informative later on in the year.

Two things we focused on were the under-represented groups in volunteering, and the image of volunteering. As a white male from a middle class background, I tend to be over-represented in things, but at Sheffield University volunteering females completely outnumber their opposite sex, especially where children are involved. I also had similar experiences whilst volunteering abroad over last summer. Maybe we are less charitable? More lazy? Or maybe we are worried about being labelled paedophiles if we volunteer with children?

Who knows, but some people have also begun to think that the image of volunteering is bad, and that the word 'volunteering' itself may have negative connotations. Working on the publicity for volunteering at the University I'd like to challenge some of these assumptions, but part of me wants to say that if you are really put off by the word 'volunteering' then yes - you probably shouldn't volunteer. I'm pretty selfish myself, so I am wary of claiming the moral high-ground here.

Recent volunteer opportunities at the Uni have been publicised under the title 'V!', and of course we can emphasise the skills that can be gained from volunteering and the affect it has on your CV – but surely it is primarily about helping something external from you? Can you volunteer to help yourself?

NfpSynergy – a specialist research consultancy for not-for-profit organisations - has lots to say about this in their report – The 21^st Century Volunteer.  

 

Posted by Harry ( 9:47 PM )
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Tuesday Oct 21, 2008

Walking Around Sheffield in the Middle Of the Night. For Charity of Course.

   The academic year has started in earnest now so it’s time to neglect studies, sit back, and play solitaire on windows - naturally. Apart from that I have been volunteering at the Sheffield radio station Sheffield Live FM twice a week and have even got involved with union and joined a committee – the Sheffield Volunteering Committee. As I’ve only just joined them it’s hard to get a feel for how it works, however everyone seemed very friendly and there were no Nazi-esque initiation ceremonies like the one causing a little stir in the news recently.  

  What they have been doing is organising some great things, and this Friday a few of us from the committee will be entering the RAG organised event, “Spiderwalk”. Think less volunteering, more sponsored-madness. It involves a 26 mile walk around Sheffield starting at 9pm, all for the purposes of raising money for a variety of charities. When you put it like that it doesn’t sound too bad, but I did it last year and I can distinctly remember the phrase ‘never again’ running through my head as me and my friend arrived at the final checkpoint. That walk had started at midnight and I had imagined the sight of a beautiful sunrise inspiring us as we sampled the nearby peak district in the early morning. Instead we were shrouded in a thick mist and went wandering off completely the wrong way, adding a needless five miles extra to our ramble. My friend and I very nearly finished last out of nearly one hundred students!

   Still, the Volunteer Committee are doing it together and I am somewhat sadistically looking forward to it this Friday. If anyone wants to sponsor me feel free to leave a comment at the end of this page and I will put some pictures up if/when I complete it.

    I’ve realised that I missed out last year by not being involved in the union’s volunteer projects and instead just doing my own thing, so if anyone has just got to university and is looking for something to do it might be worthwhile to check if your union has similar things. On the other hand, I found out about Sheffield Live FM through the do-it.org.uk database and the experience has been so enjoyable (if very amateurish). If I get anywhere above ‘mumbling idiot’, I might put a link up to the show. But more on the radio project later.....back to the solitaire.

Posted by Harry ( 11:16 PM )
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Monday Oct 06, 2008

Eye-opening experiences so far

Hello I'm Harry, (Stev, Stev-o or Steve to my mates, or 'curly' if you are that drunk at the bar last week) and I'm studying Law at Sheffield University, just starting my second year. I hail from the delightful seaside town of Scarborough, where I've spent the majority of my life: living with my parents and taking the time to avoid over-exerting myself in my studies. Now though I live in Sheffield, and I'd like to try a bit harder with my work, so we'll see how that one goes.

I started volunteering a couple of years ago after watching a BBC documentary on Homelessness (I think it was called 'Evicted.' ) and finding myself with lots of spare time and little to do. At the end of the film they advertised the site www.do-it.org.uk and ever since then whenever I've had lots of spare time and little to do, I come to this site and see what I could be doing, which is part of the reason why I am writing this blog right now.

I began by delivering newspapers round my local hospital for the WRVS which got me over my fear of lifts and hospitals at the same time, and then I began training as an advisor for the CAB. Both experiences were eye-opening in different ways – offering the Scarborough Evening News to mothers holding their (literally) new-born babies was a particularly comical experience – especially when they bought one. I'm still training to become an advisor now (largely due to laziness) and I'll be coming face to face with my first clients this Christmas. I hope.

What I love about volunteering is getting to do things that I wouldn't really think of doing, or wouldn't be encouraged to do as part of a 'real' job. I have also met some brilliant people through volunteering and so for me it is definitely a two way street - I enjoy helping others a lot, but I also get a lot out of volunteering myself - so I'm never going to pretend that I'm some Mother Teresa figure of self-sacrifice.

Anyway, I'm back in Sheffield for the next academic year (having spent most of the summer in Scarborough) and I have begun volunteering for a local radio station – Sheffield live 93.2 FM – and I'm also looking for another opportunity, perhaps volunteering in a local scheme similar to TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), but I guess I'll be writing about that later on anyway.

That's the boring bit about me out of the way; hopefully I'll be able to write at least some things of interest in the future.

Harry. 

 

Posted by Harry ( 4:23 PM )
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Friday Jul 04, 2008

Farewell

I have been continuing my volunteering all the while I haven't been blogging, which means no recent blogs but now I am typing I do have loads to update you on!

Where shall I start?

My brownies are doing well as are my rainbows. We've done loads of exciting things as the weather has started to clear allowing us to do lots of outdoor games and teambuilding and trips and such like. The park just down the road is the major attraction for the rainbows; they have a habit of begging to go which means abandoning all planned crafts and games and activities and spending an hour pushing red uniformed cheeky faces on the swings - "Any higher, and you'll be over the top!".
 
Unfortunately I have had to say goodbye to both my Rainbows and my Brownies as was offered a job even an idiot wouldn't turn down! I counted down the days and I am now here in Gibraltar working an an au pair for two little boys aged three and four.
 
The Sunday before I left the UK we organised a trip for the Brownies. We asked them where they would like to go and they said the cinema and bowling OR the chocolate factory. The chocolate factory is in Birmingham though and too expensive so we travelled by train into the next town and watched the new Narnia film, had a game of ten pin bowling and went to McDonalds. They gave me a lovely book they had made full of messages of good luck and best wishes and group pictures as well as individual cards and pressies. My rainbows presented me with a cork board which they had painted the base of a tree and flowers at the bottom and then put their hand prints all over to make a handprint tree which looked really sweet and effective. They also gave me a teddy bear which they told me I had to bring with me to Gibraltar for when I felt lonely or missed them I had to give it a hug and it would make me feel better. If that wasn't going to choke me up - nothing was!
 
They have brought me so many good times and happy memories and I was genuinly and truely sad to say goobye to them. They are wonderful girls with wonderful futures ahead of them and I can only hope that one thing I have done in my last four years with them may shape them into a better person. If that's the case - just for one single child then it makes every minute worthwhile.

Girlguiding changes the young futures of tomorrow and the volunteers help make this possible. The girls reek the benefits and the leaders share the excitement, enjoyment and satisfaction with their girls. I have loved every minute.
 
Ashley x x x

Posted by Ashley ( 10:50 AM )
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Wednesday Dec 19, 2007

End of term report

I have now completed my first term as Project Leader of READ Book Project Warwick.  For those of you who haven't read my blog before the READ Book Projects are a part of READ International.  The charity aims to 'Realise Education to Allow Development'.  As a part of this, the project I lead (alongside two other project leaders) collects high-quality, disused textbooks from local secondary schools over the course of an academic year.  We then store them and raise money for them to be sent over to Tanzania where some of our volunteers will get the chance to distribute them amongst 20 schools in the summer.  Along the way our project will attempt to raise awareness of our cause and make a real effort to get into our local schools to educate children about what challenges their peers face day in day out in developing countries.  Hopefully we can give them the chance, through arranging to round up their own school's donated books, or raising some money for us to find some solutions to the problems countries like Tanzania are facing.

It has been a busy term.  Life as a project leader is markedly different then it is a volunteer.  Luckily this year we have had managed to recruit a very impressive group of students at Warwick University to help us, but even so the extra responsibility inevitably eats into your spare time.  However, it has been an absolute pleasure to watch 20 or so people put a huge amount of effort into something that you consider really important.  Going out to Tanzania in the summer and seeing some of the issues that the children there have to overcome really brings it all home how much of an impact we can make.  It really is worth it.

READ International has expanded quickly since it was first formed.  Starting at Nottingham University, it went to five others last year and now has 11 universities running READ Book Projects.  Back at the end of October the charity re-launched at the Houses of Commons.  Douglas Alexander (Minister for International Development) was present and spoke as well as the Tanzania High Commissioner in the UK.  Bruce Forsyth, Mick Jagger, Deila Smith and Toady from neighbours also made an appearance....

(Some, if not all of the last four names might have been lies).

 The point I am trying to make is that it is a charity that is going places.  It is being taken seriously both here (READ International won the award for Best New Charity in the UK and the Times Charity Awards this year) and in Tanzania.  It is giving me, and other young people the chance to do something about issues which to them are very important.

 This summer I have been given the chance to go back to Tanzania.  I will have a bit more responsibility and it will be more like a job.  With the beaches, the mountains, the beer, the rice, the sun, the rice, the temperatures, the rice, the people and the rice I can't think of a better way to spend a summer.  Well..a tropical island, unlimited Gin and Tonic and Liz Hurley wouldn't be objectionable.  But then I wouldn't get rice. 

Happy Christmas.   

 

Posted by Tom G ( 10:28 PM )
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Sunday Oct 07, 2007

Back in the UK

I returned from Tanzania a couple of weeks ago.  After book distribution we went to Zanzibar for a few days and had a launch event for our charity at the British Council in Tanzania.  The attendance of the British High Commissioner and other civil servants showed how seriously READ International and the work it does is being taken in the country.  The presence of some business men working for companies in Tanzania was also pleasing.  If the country is to continue its development then people like these are key.  Already a huge amount of western money is flowing into Tanzania.  If a bit of that could be diverted into projects which equip Tanzanian people to become successful and perhaps work for the companies which have provided the money in the first place the country could go along way to solving the problems it has at current.

The READ book projects are taking place at eleven UK universities this year.  This means the charity has effectively doubled in size.  People are every level of the charity, from the chairman and trustees, interns, project leaders and returning volunteers are working hard to ensure this expansion is a successful one.  At Warwick I and the other two project leaders have been hard at work this week recruiting volunteers, attempting to find warehouse space and planning how our year will take shape.  The goals of collecting 25,000 books, raising £10,000 and getting as much publicity as possible can be a bit daunting.  However if you get a group of committed people together it quickly becomes achievable.

At the start of last year, I was daunted by the targets.  However our group of volunteers became friends and had a laugh whilst we did most things.  I'm sure the same will happen this year.  Volunteering can be tough sometimes and it's not always the fun, satisfying experience people advertise it as.  However in the end, if it's a cause you believe in, and with a group of people you like it can become very enjoyable.  I think above everything that's what I will take from the project last year and my trip to Tanzania.  I could blather on about our achievements, personal fulfilment, personal development (probably my most hated phrase, up there with 110%) and the like but most of all I had fun.  I had fun collecting the books.  I had fun fundraising.  I had fun in Tanzania.  I saw some pretty depressing things, that make you realise how much work there is still to be done but I was with a fantastic group, saw some fantastic things and laughed.  A lot. 

What more could you ask for?

Posted by Tom G ( 12:00 AM )
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Monday Oct 01, 2007

Long time - no blog

Hi everyone

Very very very very sorry i havent writen in what seems like months and months . I am really sorry but everything has been so hectic recently i literally have not had a spare second.

Anyway, the cadets are back and the autum term is shaping up to be very productive all ready. The first aid course will be starting next week, with special people coming in to teach, just to keep it interesting. This time we are also going to let the cadets decide which bits of the course they want to do, to a certain extend anyway some things are core. This means the older ones, who have done the course before get to revise the things they are not sure on and learn other, new skills when something they are confident on is being taught.

Last week was really good as well. Although the first aid course hadn't officially started we gave the cadets an oppurtunity to do some fun team games and activities. This not only meant the  new cadets had a chance to meet the older ones, but it also allowed everyone to get a little bit competitive - which is always good when prizes of chocolate and sweets are invloved !

 

Posted by Sammy ( 3:56 PM )
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Tuesday Sep 11, 2007

Book Distribution

Hello again,

The past week and a half has seen the volunteers from Warwick University distributing books to schools around Mtwara region in southern Tanzania.  This has been an interesting and sometimes rewarding experience.  Last week we visited the various districts in Mtwara, distributing to about three schools a day.  It was hard work, as at each school there is a set procedure we follow, talking to the headmaster, the teachers and the students.  We do this to ensure to books will be properly used, and not hidden away in cupboards or anything. 

When the teachers are interested, the pupils enthusiastic and the headmaster welcoming it is easy to feel satisfied and that you really have achieved something by collecting the textbooks and bringing them out to Tanzanian as a free donation.  However this has not been the reaction in every school.  A lot of teachers ask for more, wanting to know why we aren’t providing science equipment or laboratories, some headmasters ask us for money to buy transport for the school and in one school it was obvious that the children had been primed to tell us that the books weren’t enough and they wanted more.

I’m not criticizing the children or the teachers (I do however think that the headmasters display a slightly bizarre attitude when they say their greatest need is for a car, when their schools don’t have water or electricity), infact I think that have a valid point.  What we are doing as a charity is only scraping the surface.  However when you have worked hard all year to achieve something you really believe in because you want to give children who don’t have as much as we did a little bit more it is an attitude that can be a bit disappointing.   I would like to be able to do more and I’m sure my fellow volunteers would too.

The fact is though that we can’t.  Not yet anyway.  One night after discussing the sentiments I have expressed above I realized this disappointed attitude lacked a little faith.  I am sure that out of the twenty five schools we will give books too, ten might not use then to their full potential, in five schools books might go missing and in another five the pupils might not have as much access to them as we ask too.  However if only in one school the books are used properly I would be happy.  If only one or two children learnt something new I would be happy.  That is a better situation than before.  Some people work their whole entire lives to change or better just a few people’s lives.  I have been lucky enough, through READ, to have the chance to do that already. 

The point I am trying to make, is that often in development and with the issues I have highlighted in my previous blogs, the issues can become so complex that it is easy to become disillusioned.  Imposing on someone else’s culture, aid dependency, tied aid and debt are all serious issues that need discussing and should be the focus of acamdemic debate.  Let us not forget though that a lot of people around the world are doing lots of good things on a very simple level.  To me, READ is successful because it is keeping things simple.  How can you go wrong by giving books?  They might get stolen, but if the person steals them what else are they going to do with them but read them.  They might get sold on but again they are going to be read.  READ cannot at present provide science labs, teacher training, water infrastructure or buildings.  It can give books and any impact these have, however small, however much it disappoints your original expectations should be celebrated.  By giving books, something has changed and more choices open up.  What after all is development about if it is not giving people more choices?

Having said all of this, and being proud of what the Warwick Tanzanian Book project has achieved, what READ has achieved and what me the other volunteers out here have achieved there is always scope for more.  Next year I think we can give more books, I think we can raise more money.  More than this I think READ can do more to ensure these books are used and understood.  This is not disappointment, but ambition.  Right now I am proud, but next year I want to be prouder.  

Posted by Tom G ( 4:00 PM )
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Tuesday Aug 21, 2007

Guilt Trip and partnerships

Hello,

Yesterday I accepted a seemingly innocent invitation to go and visit an orphanage in a village outside the town we are staying in.  After a bus journey and lengthy cycle I came to the village with my giude (the head of the orphanage) to find that infact no orphange existed.  Ahhhhh 'but there are plans, mister Tom'  the orphanage head said..'there are plans'. What there was was an open space, with a few bricks strewn about.  'But Mister Tom we cannot make the orphange without money'.  It quickly  became apparent that this was the aim of taking me to see the site of the proposed orphanage.  I lunched with this mans family (all used to white people, as the head of the orphanage said he brings westerners often) and everyone was very polite.  Was this a scam?  Was i right to feel a bit put out?  The head (Charles was his name, well charles to his friends, but insisted on being known as Prince Charles to people who just knew him) was very nice to me, and his company meant I could venture to a village I wouldn't have otherwise.  But the fact is I'm am already here doing charity work and that he knew this made it feel like a bit much.  The trip he took me on was a very slick operation, designed ( i felt) to persuade me into donating money. 

What exactely the money would go on was unclear.  For me, vague notions of an orphanage are not enough.  Much better the sort of planned development, working in partnership with local people that READ international promotes.  Later Charles took us to a secondary school, perhaps thinking that we could donate this school books as this is what our charity does.  However the region the school was in is not one high on the priority list READ works on.  This priority list is given to us by the Tanzanian Ministry of Education and the partnership READ has with them is extremely important to its ethos as a charity.  Without this partnership, our work would not only be much less useful but conform to the old stereotype of western aid swooping in to make everything right again.  The bare fact is that we have no clue what is best for the poeple here, which schools and which districts need books the most.  We can make a judgement but it is based on a very shallow interpretation of what little knowledge we have.

READ recognises this.  As a student charity, it could raise money all year for 'Princes Charles Orphanage'.  Behaps we could drop in a few comments about how aids is robbing tanzanian children of their parents.  Perhaps, just perhaps this would be a more attractive propisition for the people we stop on the street and ask for money than raising money to send textbooks is.  However it would not be right.  With READ'S empathsis on us volunteers working with the local people, and aiding national policy, we can perhaps give a part of a generation of Tanzanian's the skills to help themselves.  Charles wanted me to do everything for him.  He wanted me to give him money, and on hearing I couldnt, he wanted me to apply for him to interanational charities.  By doing this I would not be empowering or developing.  I would be giving money to a man, with a vague plan, and with no guarentee it would be spent on what he said. 

When people give to READ, or support it in any way, they can be sure they are giving to a charity that is not only accountable to the west's vigarous charity laws but also accountable to Tazanians.  We ensure this by working in partnerships, and by going to local people with a plan and seeing how they want to work it.  Empowerment, development, call it what you want.  But to me, asking local people what they want us to do for them is just common sense.

Tom G

 

Posted by Tom G ( 1:19 PM )
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Saturday Aug 18, 2007

From Tanzania - Cruel to be kind?

Hello,

A week ago I left the UK to fly to Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania.  After a weekend on the beach, meeting volunteers from the other READ projects at different universities around the country I have set off on a research trip to three regions in Tanzania which READ hopes to send textbooks to next year.

Each region's REO (regional education officer) will be asked to pick 20 schools from his region out of a possible 60 or 70 to have books donated to them.  At first this selection process seems hard, all the secondary schools are short on books, all want more books and all the children are as worthy as each other to be given the chance to have access to more textbooks.  How do you then make the decision of which 20 schools should recieve the books?

It was only really yesterday, when I looked in at four different schools in the Rukwa region of Tanzania that I realised why it was so important to be selective.  Firstly, by distributing large sets of textbooks to 20 schools, instead of a few to say 50 schools, it is possible perhaps to change what happens here already with textbooks, that one is shared between 10 or more children.  Secondly, by making it clear to the schools that only a few of them will be chosen to recieve textbooks, it may mean that they make an extra effort to fufil our criteria for selection, namely that the school ensures children will have access to books when they want and the school will encourage a culture of reading.  

Yesterday I saw a good example of this.  I visited a private school, funded by a mission, which had lovely buildings and was undeniably the best 'learning environment'  we saw.  However the source of funds for this school, whilst ensuring it looked nice, seemed to draw the line at supplying it adaquetly with resources.  It had less textbooks per child than the government funded schools.  However, the teachers we met were very switched on and alert.  After I had said the READ spiel, they immediately were asking how they could ensure thier school got the books, talked about a library, book loaning system and after school book clubs.  Although this school, and its pupils were undoutably 'better off' than some of the government schools we saw it as clear they would make the most efficient use of the books.  Thus the question that seems to dog so many development decision occurs; do you give donations where it is most needed, or where it will be used to the greatest effect?

Two years ago, I worked in a school in Borneo for three months.  The village was desperately poor, farming enough only to feed themselves and living in pretty poor conditions.  Yet they had a well built school and suprisingly for that area a library that was as well stocked as any English Primary school's might have been.  However the library was not used, the school badly attended and when it was the behaviour of the children terrible.  It was obvious these children had no respect for education, in fact the only education that mattered to them was one of learning how to survive off th land.  The three months that followed were intersting but ultimately a waste of time.  I could not teach these children anything. 

The point I am trying to make is controversial and not as simple as I might make it seem.  However it seems to me that in development and donations we should look far beyond to immediate gratification that a donation might cause.  Books are poccessions and they will cause underpriviledged children to smile and adults to think you are brilliant.  However if they are not used, then all we have done by giving them is make ourselves feel better.  By being harsher and more deliberative perhaps development charities can make more of a difference and a meaningful one.  Perhaps it is wrong to get ahead of ourselves before basic aid is in place.  Perhaps we find these basics boring and do not want to be involved in them.     

Speak soon,

TomG

Posted by Tom G ( 7:21 AM )
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Wednesday Aug 01, 2007

Hello!

Hello,

My name is Tom Gray and I'm a second year student at Warwick University.  I got involved in some conservation work whilst at school, going to Borneo and since then Belize to take part in eco-tourism projects and teaching.  At this point voluntary work and the voluntary sector seemed like an interesting sideline, something to dabble in but then leave behind for seemingly loftier ambitions.

Going to university after a gap year changed this viewpoint.  I began to fancy doing something a bit different with my life.  I got into volunteering not because of high morals and a chance to make a difference, but simply because the type of work you get to do seems interesting.  I might get to travel, I might get to work with local people in cultures I know nothing about, I might get to organise a project from beginning to end and get that sense of satisfaction you get when you know everything has gone well.  Of course I might not get a chance to do any of these things and I might change my mind.  A career in London, with a suit, an office, a comfortable wage, ski-ing holidays, good restaurants and bars and a gym membership has it attractions.  However at the moment I am determined to give something different a go, it would seem silly not to try and who knows what doors may open.

Working for READ international has been one door that has opened since being at university.  The organisation runs projects in several UK universities, collecting textbooks from local schools and sending them to Tanzania, where they are distributed (with advice and guidance) to schools which need them.  These books would have otherwise been thrown away, filling landfills up and down the country.  Instead some (the useful ones which fit the Tanzanian syllabus and come in sets) are recycled and used again.  For me READ seems to optimise the benefits that a well thought out development scheme can bring.  It gives no huge donations, employs minimal paid employees, places responsibility and autonomy in the hands of its volunteers and operates to a successful business model repeated across its projects in universities. 

From volunteering last year, I am going on to become one of three project leaders next year.  This summer I am going to Tanzania with the books and have become involved in the charities fundraising and branding strategy.  The charity will move forward with ambition and professionalism, both qualities which it is increasingly embodying.  It does an awful lot of good for children in Africa but also children here, giving school presentations wherever possible to raise awareness.  It is a low cost, low overhead but high impact charity in its infancy.  I feel lucky to have become a part of it.  I will be in touch again soon.

Tom G    

Posted by Tom G ( 3:29 PM )
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