Charlotte Brown and Rebecca Boardman, both from Peter Symonds College
Two awards were made this year – congratulations to the winners!
Charlotte Brown - Muhaka Rainforest, Kenya, 2011
In July 2011 I will be spending a month in Kenya near the Muhaka Rainforest with a gap volunteer group Camps International. The work I will be doing will be based on the direct needs of the community, and as around 70% of the rural population in Kenya is living below the poverty line; ongoing work needs to be done to severely reduce this percentage.
An ongoing project I will be assisting with is the provisioning of eco friendly and safe stoves into the homes of the community. I will also continue other volunteers work with a mini enterprise which offers alternative fuel sources to the surrounding communities. I will be working in Muhaka primary school, and may focus on the provisioning of facilities and sports development training, and to improve the livelihoods of the community by supporting income generating activities. I will spend a few days conducting environmental work at Mwaluganje Elephant Sanctuary, including reintroduction of indigenous trees to the sanctuary, monitoring of elephants welfare and environmental education activities and possibly assisting on the production of elephant dung paper. This is in a big effort for to recreate the elephant’s habitats and alleviate the human pressures on the species and environment.
The development gap is an important aspect of global geography which I have a great interest in. The widening gap between the rich and the poor is becoming more significant and the importance of development aid and developing ‘bottom up’ solutions is being recognized. In addition work I will be undertaking in the Kaya Forest which is one of the biodiversity hotspots supporting high endemism plants. Work to undertake management systems with the Kaya elders to protect biodiversity in the area is hugely geographically related, as management is becoming increasingly important.
Whilst I am in Africa I am going to ‘blog’ my journey, to show what I am doing to family and friends, and draw on my personal experiences. Personally this is going to be an enormous achievement being the first time travelling without family or friends. I also hope to meet a whole range of new people, and experience a culture and lifestyle very different to what we have, and take for granted in the UK. Everybody says that you can’t tell until you experience firsthand, so that is what I wish to do. I will gain a sense of self dignity from this, and from helping the children and schools personally. I want to make a difference to their lives, even if it is for a short while. Working as a team, and improving communication skills will help me later in life. In addition, this work is very relevant to my chosen university course – Geography and Economics, and I hope it will help me learn more about my interests. Most of I hope all the memories will stay with me for the rest of my life making me realise the importance of helping others and the fortune which we have.
Rebecca Boardman - Project Embabazi, Kanjobe, Uganda
In July of this year, I will be undertaking a grassroots sustainable development project (“Project Embabazi”) in the rural village of Kanjobe, south-western Uganda, as part of a team from Peter Symonds College. The majority of Kanjobe’s 200 residents are subsistence farmers with few cash crops and little capital. The school is ill-equipped and the village is without access to electricity or running water, illustrating the large socio-economic barriers to development. Since the IMF/World Bank dropped $1.5 billion of debt in 2000 under the HIPC initiative there has been an increase in aid to Uganda. However, due to the heavily corrupt government, much of it is diverted away from individuals who need it the most, meaning that for rural villages such as Kanjobe hope for development stems exclusively from small scale, bottom-up development initiatives such as “Project Embabazi”.
Our team believe that development is the most sustainable when it involves public participation (a component of the sustainability quadrant which we considered when designing “Project Embabazi”); therefore we communicated with a representative from the village of Kanjobe who advised us on the specific needs and desires of the community. We believe that education is the key to long term development; deepening human capital, and providing skills and information to enable the local people to escape from poverty. Therefore “Project Embabazi” involves improving the resources of the school by supplying 100 textbooks, a set of refurbished laptops, and a solar panel to power them. This also develops renewable energy potential in the village. All the equipment provided will be purchased either in the capital Kampala or at local markets, meaning that all money will benefit the Ugandan economy and people.
We also aim to provide training for the use of the laptops and to run smaller mini-projects such as an Arts and a Sports day which will involve the sharing of traditional past-times between the team and Bakiga people. During our week in the village we will spend time with the local people, sharing our different cultures and values and building long lasting relationships. We plan to leave Kanjobe with ‘sponsored’ animals that can add to their agricultural potential and improve their standard of living.
Through the project I hope to grow both personally and geographically. The project provides the perfect opportunity to practically apply many of the principles and theories studied in A level Geography, in particularly surrounding poverty, development, global networks and technology. The increased global awareness will also be invaluable as I start a Geography degree in September (the third Cambridge paper looks at the making and consequences of the African periphery). Personally, I hope to learn from the Bakiga’s non-materialistic outlook, sharing their importance of family and relationships, values I hope to embody and share when I return to the UK. In addition, the personal experience from the project, including planning and communication will be useful as international development is an area that I am interested in pursuing in the future.
