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Letter from Team Leader, Sarah Whitney, in South Africa:
The GDIs have been working especially hard over the past week, and we have seen great results. They are continuing their monitoring and evaluation of past ThinkImpact initiatives. The groups from Utah, Dixie, and Makrepeni have been evaluating the Samson Primary School and Shiviti Primary School libraries, the Utah Microfinance Initiative, the Mundzuku Scholarship Program, the Manyangana High School soccer field, and the Utah Community Center. Interns have been working closely with translators and community partners to find the value and impact of each project that ThinkImpact has played a part in over the past few years. This work is incredibly valuable to the organization and a excellent experience for those who hope to pursue international development and non-profit work in the future.
This week has also been filled with a lot of fun surrounding soccer and the World Cup. While South Africa and the USA are out of the tournament, the interns are still enjoying this exciting time for the country and the communities. On Wednesday, everyone traveled to Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit to watch Australia take on Serbia. On Saturday and Sunday, the interns put their leadership skills into practice as we partnered with FUNDaFIELD, a group of 8 American high school students, to host the 3rd Annual Village Cup. This year’s soccer tournament included twenty teams from around the region, and thanks to the interns hard work, hundreds of community members were able to enjoy the weekend’s fun. We were also lucky enough to have a visit at the tournament by Sidney Frankel, founder and CEO of the Buffelshoek Trust, and Deputy Chief of Mission Helen La Lime of the U.S. Embassy in South Africa. This weekend also saw a visit from Saul Garlick, executive director of ThinkImpact, who was able to get to know the interns and share his experiences with them.
It has been a busy week here in South Africa, and I am sure the weeks ahead will be filled with just as much fun, excitement, and hard work. We can’t wait to update you again soon.
Posted by Sarah Whitney
It has been an exciting week so far in Manyeleti, South Africa! The Global Development Interns for ThinkImpact have arrived in Dixie, Makrepeni, and Uta. There are 12 interns this year and they will be living and working in the communities for eight weeks. The ThinkImpact staff has already recognized so much potential in this year’s South Africa GDIs in the short time since we began training in DC last week. The GDIs spent the day yesterday visiting all of ThinkImpact’s past initiatives in Manyeleti, including the high school soccer fields, primary school libraries, and community centers. Today the GDIs began using field work tools for asset-based community development (ABCD) to learn more about their communities and create a foundation for the work they will be doing over the next eight weeks. With the excitement over the World Cup reaching its peak in South Africa (only three days before the competition begins!) we are equally excited to see what the GDIs will accomplish this summer.
As the Uta Community Center nears completion, we are anticipating an exciting opening celebration and great chance for the Uta GDIs to get involved. As soon as electricity is installed, the community will be able to watch the World Cup games at the center. This will provide a safe space for fun for the whole community and a great start for the revenue-generating activity and small business involvement at the center. Women will be able to sell snacks, drinks, and other goods at the games and community members will pay a small fee for entrance. The GDIs will be completing monitoring and evaluation assessments of the community center over the next month to determine the “social return on investment” of this ThinkImpact fellowship initiative. The GDIs will also have a chance to attend the opening of the center and will be able to see the development of community programs over the next two months. This will be a great resource for the GDIs to get a first-hand experience of the successes and challenges that come with pursuing a fellowship as they complete their internship field work and begin to develop a sense of where they wish to go next. We are excited to see the advocacy projects and fellowship proposals for social businesses that come out of this year’s GDI in South Africa, and will be updating you soon on all that’s going on Dixie, Makrepeni, and Uta.
Posted by Saul Garlick, Executive Director
In 2007, SMRC hosted its first Global Development Internship. After the life changing and deeply rewarding summer of working with youth in Manyeleti, South Africa, the US students that had joined us had made close friendships across the globe. Among the biggest issues that the GDIs (then known as American Participating Students or “AMPS”) were exposed to and discussed at length was the rapidly spreading HIV/AIDS issues.
When we returned from South Africa that August, we saw a headline for a condom recall in the region where we had been working and continue to work. The recall stated that “Choice Brand” condoms were faulty. The idea of faulty condoms in a high-risk HIV/AIDS region looked like a human rights violation – and we were all devastated. As a response, SMRC sent around a petition for condoms to be donated from quality companies to the community.
This year the condom issue has taken a different, much more promising direction. This summer GDI Trae Watson and the Buffelshoek Trust organized for 60,000 condoms to be donated per month to the community in the effort to combat HIV/AIDS. We are grateful to him and Jasper Watson for their hard work. What an achievement for health!!!
We are halfway done with the internship and time has really just flown by! We have all been finishing up our “Monitoring and Evaluating” reports about the past SMRC projects in Makrepeni. For these reports we have looked at the Communtity Center/Creche, Samson Primary School Library, and Samson Primary School Computer Lab and through observation and interviews we have determined whether they have met their original goals. Unfortunately, progress has been slow and many of the improvements from last year have fallen apart. We are spending the next three weeks on our own small projects to once again improve these places. Camps are over now; the kids had a blast at field day and hopefully learned a lot during our education classes. Another main focus of the next few weeks is the planning of the Soccer for Real Change Soccer Tournament 2009. We have been organizing the soccer tournament/health day for August 1st at in Utha. We are trying to get some big name sponsors for food and water and money to buy other resources like soccer balls and jerseys. It should be a very fun and exciting day filled with sports and education, raising awareness about HIV/AIDS and getting tested. We have done a few things for fun in the past weeks. A group of twelve went to the Djuma Game Reserve last Tuesday for one night and the remaining people go this Tuesday. The first group had a great time on safari, taking showers, and eating great food! Our retreat to Hazyview has been rescheduled for next week and we are all looking forward to that as well. On Saturday we threw a big braai (barbeque) for all the interns and stuffed ourselves with beef and Boer worst…mmm! It is hard to believe there is less than a month left, but we are having a great time and learning a lot!
Interns have now decided on fellow and non-fellow tracks within the GDI program. Non-fellow projects within Makrepeni range from tidying up the library at Samson, adding new mice to the computers in Samson, minor fixes to rainwater project at Makrepeni community center, clean-up of office area in community center, trash pick up and creating a check out system in the library at Samson to encourage more use.
Hello Everybody! So we have been living in Makrepeni for a week and a half now and have had a number of exciting, fun, and interesting experiences. The six of us arrived to the village on Saturday afternoon and got settled into our homestays. Callen, Kevin, and Kelvin are living in the old house of one of the teacher in the community, Depa, who has been extremely friendly and helpful in assisting us in our transition. Jessica and Kate are living with Depa’s sister and her family, two teenagers and three children, right down the road. We have spent a lot of time with Depa’s nephew Tumelo and his friends, who are all in grade 12, speak very good English, and will act as our translators and resources in the community for the next several weeks. We have been getting to know the community over the past week, learning how to live as villagers and perform the daily tasks. We learned how to fetch water, wash clothes, and take bucket showers on the first few days here, all of which were a totally different experience than anything we are used to. Perhaps the most entertaining and strange experience we have had so far is killing a chicken. With the help of Depa’s sister Elsie and a few local children, we caught the chicken, Kevin and Michael killed it, and then we plucked and cooked it. Yesterday we learned how to pound corn to make mealie-pap, the porridge-like staple of the local diet, using a giant mortar and pestle. This task proved to be extremely difficult and strenuous, deepening our respect for the local women and their strength. All of us have discovered this week how truly out of shape we are with all of the walking, carrying heavy things, and most of all, playing soccer. The local boys play soccer daily and all of us are attempting to learn how, Micheal being the most talented and the rest of us getting laughed at. Our group has spent most of the rest of our time talking to members of the community and determining the resources available for possible projects. On Monday we toured all of SMRC’s past projects to get ideas for improvements and new initiatives in the villages. We have attended a few training sessions and talked about our ideas and are very excited to start working in the community. Next week and the following week we will be running a day camp for the local children, who are out of school for winter break. Everyone is very excited to work with the children and all of the locals have showed nothing but gratitude for our presence here in Makrepeni. We will keep you updated as often as possible and when the internet will allow.
Posted by Saul Garlick, Executive Director
OneWorld.net selected the inspiring work of community leader and great friend of SMRC as the subject of a story on early childhood education. Doris is a special woman because she has the ideas and persistence to turn difficult situations into powerful success stories. Read the story published by OneWorld here: http://www.euronews24.org/world/mother-to-a-community-oneworld-net/
Posted by Daniel Armanios, Former Global Development Intern
I found that South Africa, especially in the Eastern Cape, suffers from water scarcity, which inadequate infrastructure has exacerbated. My goal is now to help rural communities self-develop infrastructures they can locally manage to ensure a sustainable water supply. This goal directly emanated from what I saw on-the-ground in Manyeleti. Through it all, I realized that all peoples share one common value: a sunny and indefatigable human spirit. Read the rest of this entry »
