Week Three

This is an old post that never got posted. I'll try to get an update soon but I've been super busy with projects and internship assignments and going to Suva! Pictures to come also.


Week Three
I’m a little over halfway done! I can hardly believe it. I thought I’d give an update on how the projects are going that I’m working on.
Veilomani Boys Home: I teach Monday – Thursday for 1 ½ hours rotating between English and math. This project didn’t have a lot of structure before I took over as project lead. Basically, volunteers would just go and teach from a workbook or just hang out with the boys there. It’s a little crazy that the people in charge of there don’t really care what we teach or what we do for the hour and a half that we’re there. That hour and a half is the only “traditional” learning any of them get (i.e. they don’t learn English or math any other way). There’s one person who taught before HELP International came but he also teaches automotives and is currently getting his master’s degree so he kind of considers basic English and math his lowest priority. It’s pretty unfortunate because some of these kids don’t know how to read or do basic math, let alone write letters or read numbers. The school is a two year trade school so my ultimate goal is to get the teacher back in the classroom and to create a two year curriculum to help guide him with what he should be teaching. I think our volunteers would be most helpful as one-on-one tutors for those who struggle the most (and typically get lost in the crowd….getting moved on without learning anything). I have an outline of this curriculum and am just waiting to meet with the head person over there to re-negotiate our roles.
Gardening: This is a project I’m in charge of but it’s something I’ve had a lot of fun doing. So far I’ve been to three schools to help them plant their gardens and I’ve been back to one school to teach nutrition classes. It’s a lot of fun to be able to interact one-on-one with the kids and to do some manual labor. A lot of the work we do involves researching or partnering with existing NGO’s to make them better – so any chance we get to just hang out with the local people is a lot of fun.
Fundraising: One way our volunteers have noticed we can help is to assist organizations in their fundraising efforts. For example, the Ba School for Special Education has an insanely small budget – especially for the needs the school has. They rely a ton on sponsors and donations to just keep going. One of our volunteers, Darcy, has decided to have a Walkathon to help fundraise money for the school. I’m teaming up with Darcy to help with preparation for the event (it’s on July 30 so I won’t actually get to be there). Another fundraiser is for Gold Foundation. I think I’ve talked about it a little bit before. Gold is an NGO that exists to “help the poor and needy of Tavua.” They host a carnival every year where they fundraise 80% of their money. The carnival this coming week so all of us are going to be helping out there.
Those are the main projects I’m working on at the moment. I like the tag along on other projects every once in a while to mix things up.