Team Blog about our time with AEE Kigali written by all the wonderful members of the AEE Kigali Team; David, our team leader; Lion-Sam, Chinwe, Claire, Vicky, Rachel, Beth and Henry!
We have now come to the very very end of our placement - thanks for sticking with us for so long!! Our time in Kigali has been life changing and we have learnt so much. We really hope that we have inspired you to 'Challenge yourself to change your world'!
From left to right - Claire, Rachel, Henry, Beth, Sam, Vicky, David and Chinwe!!
Lots of love Kigali Dream Team July to September 2014 xxx
We have now come to the end of our Tearfund ICS placement, partnering with AEE based in Kigali City. We have had some of the best ten weeks of our lives; doing our project work, creating relationships with the staff, living together, celebrating birthdays and just generally having adventures. SO we thought, what better way to end our trip than to celebrate all of our team highlights!!
Gasabo Mission Outreach: Our entire team loved this day - leading the children in Sunday school, playing games with them after church. It was the first time we had done any work with children and having such a positive reaction from both the children and their leaders was fantastic, and a great encouragement!! We loved getting to dance with members of the community and see numerous choirs perform. It was an honour being asked to come up and pray for people - it was one of the first times we felt we had truly integrated with a community. Mission Outreach Blog Post
Moving in Day!! We were sad to be leaving our friends from orientation however, our first day in the AEE guest house was full of laughter and joy as we couldn't wait to get started with the work and really get stuck in to the reason we came out here and joined ICS in the first place. Further we were also so excited to properly bond as a team and live together - deciding who was sharing with who etc...
The First time the Staff Meeting was held in English: This was one the best moments of the entire trip. Prior to our English lessons the staff were unable to communicate effectively in English and required a translator at all times. However after a couple of lessons their language skills improved dramatically and they were able to hold the meeting in English!! This was a great reinforcement that what we were doing was worthwhile and was having a positive impact. Post this and with more lessons the staff were able to hold a fully fledged debate in English during our last week. AEE English Lessons Blog
Feeling like a Part of the Team: We loved the way we were taken around the see all of the self-help groups and the projects that AEE were a part of - it really made us feel like part of the team that they wanted to share all of their work with us. Also the way that they included us in the staff meetings was lovely and how they were so genuinely interested in what we had been up to during our week and weekend.
Going out for Dinner: We loved all our hangouts as a team, visiting different restaurants, experiencing new sorts of food. We even introduced Henry and David to the delights of Mexican food by taking them to Meze Fresh. We always had so much fun; laughing, joking, messing around, telling stories.
Climbing Mount Kigali: We climbed Mount Kigali as a team - and although we didn't find the cafe at the top and it took rather longer than we expected. We had a fantastic time working together as a team, telling stories, encouraging each other and hanging out. We got down just at the rain began to start - lucky timing!! As a team we really showed how strong and determined we are through climbing Mount Kigali. Conquering Mountains in Kigali
Celebrating Chinwe's Birthday: Chinwe turned 20 whilst we were out in Rwanda and to celebrate her birthday we threw a party with popcorn, samosas (her fave!!) and cake. We were fortunate enough to be able to borrow some speakers and we all had a fantastic evening dancing and singing with friends. We were so happy that Chinwe enjoyed the evening and thought that it was a fitting celebration for a 20th birthday.
Hanging out as Team: All the nights that we hung out together: watching films, playing cards, playing murder in the dark and mafia. Nothing got the Dream Team going like a heated game of charades and the name in the hat!! So many nights were spent laughing and joking about that it would be too difficult to pick a favourite!
Today our UKVs fly home to England! We wish them a safe journey; they will be sorely missed. We have become our own little family out here in Kigali, and made some fantastic friends!
Two of our UKVs will be flying to Kenya and then onto Heathrow, and the other two will be flying to Amsterdam and ending in Heathrow!
We spent today at de-brief presenting back to the other teams what we have been doing during our placement and hearing all the exciting things that they have been getting up to across Rwanda!!!
It was so lovely seeing everybody again - but can't believe we all go home tomorrow!!
This is the third piece written by Rachel for her local newspaper The Brentwood Gazette!
What does it
feel like knowing you’re going to be living and workingwith
complete strangers for ten weeks? Honestly petrifying. I have to tell
you for the entire week before my ICS placement I was racked with dread,
uncertainty and at points convinced I wouldn’t be able to do it. A mammoth
sized task lay before me – to immerse myself into an entirely new culture, with
entirely new people for ten weeks and come out the other side unscathed.
It felt as if
there was a ticking time bomb to judgement day.
Are they going to accept me? Will they like me? Am I really strong
enough and mature enough to handle this? These thoughts were just the first of
many challenges I would face during my time in Kigali. Challenges that felt
like immovable mountains; too huge to face on your own. And then I realised
something crucial – I don’t have to tackle these on my own. We
are all part of one team! Team Kigali 2014 – international development
volunteers, planners extrordinaires and mountain conquerors! Together
we could achieve anything, and we proved that many times.
Some of the team on Mount Kigali with our lovely little guides!
Last Saturday
we took a team trip to Mount Kigali. The plan was 45 minutes of climbing,
finished off with a celebratory coffee and breath taking views. But in true
“Team Kigali” fashion the plan went straight out of the window! We actually spent about 2.5 hours climbing
through densely packed forest, and we NEVER found that coffee shop. (Rwandan
coffee is rather special).
Beautiful flower en-route up the mountain.
From an
outsiders’ perspective this was a pretty rubbish day; lots of strenuous effort
with no tangible reward. Yet this was one of my favourite days of the entire
trip. We demonstrated how strong we were as a team; relying on each other to
make it up steep hills right to the very top. We spent the day laughing, taking
pictures, telling stories and revelling in each other’s company. When we
reached the top we were proud – we’d achieved something to be genuinely proud
of.
Some of the fantastic views we were lucky to see!!
It’s a good
metaphor for our entire time in Kigali; trial after trial, not quite achieving
what we set out to achieve but realising we’d actually achieved something else -
something much more worthwhile. I never expected it to be easy, but I did have
a glossy magazine view of volunteering. Take part in a few projects; snap some
pics, tadah world saved! From an outsiders’ perspective what we have done is
exert copious amounts of energy to no obvious avail.
But all these
tests made us stronger, better, and more mature people. They demonstrated our
personal strengths and weaknesses; allowed us to adapt as a team, to
accommodate each other. Personally, I have been able to improve my flexibility,
patience, understanding, forgiveness and the ability to think on my feet. And
that’s just for starters. Together we have blossomed and moulded each
other; we have become a family; learning
one from the other. We may not have had a glossy magazine experience of
volunteering, but we’ve had something far more powerful – we have experienced
life.
Beth, Vicky and Rachel midway through climbing Mount Kigali
There is
something strangely liberating about spending your summer with strangers. You
are free to loosen the chains of modern day society and live as who you are,
with no pre-conceptions and no existing judgements. You are able to
conquer mountains head on with a new zest and vigour. You are free to truly
live!
We had our last session at the nursery today - we taught the children about vegetables. We are really sad to see the end of this project as we all had a fantastic time and loved getting to know all the characters in our classes!!
We wish them all the best for their very bright futures ahead of them!
Raising Awareness of the View of Disabilities Around the World By Vicky Quaife:
Every week a
member of our team has to educate the other members of the team on a
developmental issue. It’s now week 7 and we’ve had such a variety of topics and
I have learnt so much through them all. This week was my week to do my
‘structural learning’ and my topic of choice is disabilities.
Definition:
When you hear
the world ‘disability’ many things may come to mind, but if you are unsure of
this word here is a definition to help you out:
‘A disability can be physical (such as paralysis, loss of limb, deafness), mental (such as depression or post-traumatic stress disorder) or intellectual (such as a learning disability). Some people are born disabled; others become disabled as a result of an accident or disease. Disabilities range from moderate to significant and can be temporary or permanent. With the help of a supportive community, education and vocational opportunities, disabled persons can make progress.’
Shocking Statistics:
Did you know that 1 BILLION people around the world (that’s roughly 15% of the population) are disabled? (UN)- That’s 1 in every 7 persons, or in some countries it’s as high as 1 in every 5!
And that within those 1 billion people, 80% of them live in developing countries!
20% of the world’s poorest people are disabled, and tend to be regarded in their own communities as the most disadvantaged.
1 in every 10 children has to cope with a disability around the world.
And within those children only 2-3% attends school! Imagine that- 97-98% of disabled children stay at home doing nothing every single day, never having the opportunity to learn, engage with other children, make friends. Not attending school and never learning basic skills is going to seriously impact your life as you grow older, having no education will probably mean that they will never be able to get a job.
Mortality for children with disabilities may be as high as 80 per cent in countries where under-five mortality as a whole has decreased below 20 per cent, says the United Kingdom's Department for International Development.
Also please bear in mind
that these statistics are widely underestimated as in many communities people
with a disability are shunned, isolated or stigmatized against, so are often
left out of census reports, or families hide their children away.
It is also
important to remember that these issues are not only occurring in developing
countries. In the UK 75% of companies of the FTSE 100 Index on the London Stock
Exchange do not meet basic levels of web accessibility, thus missing out on
more than $147 million in revenue.
Only 45
countries in the world have some sort of anti-discrimination and other
disability-specific-laws.
These two
videos sum up a little bit about what persons with a disability rights are and
how they can and should be able to exercise them!
If you would
like to see where I found my statistics then please have a look at these two
websites.
I first
started to become passionate about the rights and welfare of people with a disability
when I started placements at university. I studied Occupational Therapy and
during my placements I would be working with people who had physical disabilities,
mental health problems and long term illnesses that resulted in some sort of
disablement for that person. During my final placement I was working with adults
who had a learning disability; through these placements I was able to see
first-hand how important therapies such as occupational therapy, physiotherapy,
and speech and language therapy can really dramatically change and enhance
people’s lives.
This video is just a
little cheesy summary of occupational therapy just so you all know, and it
gives a few nice examples of how it can change peoples’ lives.
Impacts:
For many
children, the presence of an impairment leads to rejection or isolation from
experiences that are part of normal development. This situation may be exacerbated
by faulty family and community attitudes and behaviour during the critical
years when children's personalities and self-images are developing.
However existing
knowledge and skills could prevent the onset of many impairments and
disabilities, could assist affected people in overcoming or minimizing their
disabilities, and could enable nations to remove barriers which exclude
disabled persons from everyday life. As I believe that actually people who have
certain disabilities wouldn’t necessarily have to live a different life if it
wasn’t for the environment and society creating barriers for them. If all our
roads and streets were perfectly smooth a blind man could easily adapt to his
environment and would be able to live a relatively normal and fulfilling life.
The issue is
that in many countries, resources are not sufficient to detect and prevent
disabilities and cannot meet the need for rehabilitation and supportive
services of the disabled population. This is where we come in. The Millennium
Development Goals (MDG’s) are a set of 8 goals created by the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) which set out to:
Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Achieve universal primary education
Promote gender equality and empower women
Reduce child mortality
Improve maternal health
Combat HIV/AIDs, malaria and other diseases
Ensure environmental sustainability
Develop a global partnership for development
These goals
are great and are really inspirational and are planned to be completed by 2015.
However what’s missing?
15%
of the population is missing.Although disabled
people count for around 10-15% of the world’s population the MDGs
still do not include persons with a disability.
The “END
EXCLUSION – Let’s Enable the Millennium Development Goals” project sets out
to change attitudes so that persons with disabilities are not
denied their human rights because of discrimination.
They especially want to make sure that persons with disabilities are included
in programmes designed to reduce poverty, which is often not the case.
This video
explains about the ‘Say Yes’ to inclusion campaign, which is backed by the
European Union.
