Our personal development from the project period- Feb. team 2009This is a collection from the final reports from some of Feb. team 2009 memembers, this team has finished their project period in March 2010 and is having their camp future in Europe now.
Alexandra
Romanian, 25 years old, Academic for Working Children Gurgaon, India.
Six months have passed and these six months seem sometimes like years which passed in an eye blink; so many things happen and change inside you, in a totally new environment, that you barely manage to catch up with your feelings, emotions, ideas or plans that you have in your mind.
Apart from everything I was doing there, the main demand from the project was for me to teach regularly, to have classes with the children, which I tried in the beginning and after struggling for a month or so, I concluded it was impossible with my little knowledge of Hindi, no matter how many teaching materials I would use to limit the need of communication; and because in the beginning of my time in the project there was no systematic and organized teaching activity which I could join as a helping hand with suggestions and ideas for improvement, my frustration and disappointment were even greater. Slowly the situation changed and now the teaching schedule is more functional having divided the children in groups according to their level of knowledge and having given each group a responsible teacher; this way the children have a sense of belonging to a teacher and the teacher's activity and progress can be actually monitored. I consider this one of my most important contributions to this project.
Magda
Portuguese, 31 years old, Child Aid Nhamatanda Mozambique.
As always in all our experiences in life, there have been positive and less positive, but they all end up being important for us, we can learn from each situation, for example, to find a way to overcome the experience, deal with new situations, these things can lead us to know a little more about ourselves, to realize our real limits!, etc. The important thing is to pass the experiences in a constructive manner. For these last 6 months, in general I can say that proved to be a positive experience, although I had some less positive situations.
I will not say that there were some moments sometimes, when I left shaken by events, leading me to consider the importance of being there: the position as DI (Development Instructor), the difficulties of the project.
Sometimes, some people find it hard to understand our position in the project, our attitudes and primarily we are there to help (take part in the team, to see things from inside, not just as simple viewer). In my opinion the desire to help is the main motivation of a DI. This should be the fundamental reason for us to participate in this project, the project which leads us to act and make others act, trying to do something, to give our opinion, the expected response and fight for what we think is the right thing (until this constructively show otherwise ... without forgetting important point that we are there for help and not generate more problems)!!
I can say, in general, I tried to enjoy this experience as much as possible. In the beginning I did not know how to help (depending on the requirements imposed, on my abilities / skills and my integration). The most important thing was to realize and respect the culture and its people, and get to know the country that was new to me, I only had the information that exists in the normal channels of information and testimony of some people (since I am Portuguese I felt a closer relationship to the country, more than just curiosity of the country, since we have a part of our past what was common). I had the opportunity to live close to the people for some time.
Orsi
Hungarian, 23 years old, Farmers club Bilibiza, Mozambique
The work in the Escolinha was one of the biggest challenges to me. Not just because quite long time I was the only DI in the Escolinha, what meant in the breaks I had to play and take care of 30 or sometimes 40 children, who could not speak Portuguese only the local language, the Macua, so sometimes we had quite a lot of problems even with the communication. But with finding different ways of communications more or less we managed to solve this problem.
|
........................
Print friendly