I am Madia, a 23 years old French-Gambian woman. I’m a marketing student and I have always been an open-minded person with a big curiosity. While I was in France finalizing my gap-year student, nothing was motivating me to stay in the country. I made the decision to have a WWOOFer experience. It was the perfect way to improve my English skills while leaving my comfort zone being closer to the nature. I joined CICD for two months without knowing what I was going to expect. The surprise was sincerely very good. Being part of the Garden Team Here the...

By Melanie Pita, Climate Activist teacher: Today we will share with you some recipes for making your own organic compost and fertiliser, as well as compost from raw food scraps. A really good way to reduce waste and improve the yield and beauty of your garden! 1. Green compost Green compost is created by recycling green waste: grass clippings, leaves, flowers, plant stalks and other plant material from garden and park. What are the benefits of green composting? Green compost provides slow release of major and micro nutrients, improves soil structure as well as workability & rooting potential, increases moisture retention...

By Melanie Pita, Climate Activist teacher A new garden season has begun and with it a lot of new tasks. At CICD we have four sections for our garden production. The small walled garden, the big walled garden, the greenhouse and all the flower areas. We have made plans for our garden farm for the next 5 years and now it is time to get the hands into the soil and get prepared. Let me start by telling you about our new greenhouse, in a building outside the walled garden. There we have 3 raised beds where we will be...

By Noemi Karacsony, Gaia team teacher at CICD From Earthday.org 22nd of April we celebrate Earth day!! This year, the headline is Restore our Earth. World Earth day is realised every year on 22nd of April to create awareness about pollution and to celebrate the Blue Planet - or our Mother Earth. The first earth day was in 1970 and gave a voice to an emerging public consciousness about the state of our planet — in the decades leading up to the first Earth Day, Americans were consuming vast amounts of leaded gas through massive and inefficient automobiles. Industry discharge smoke...

By Melanie Pita, Climate Activist team teacher Today I would like to write about the issue of the Military Complex and how it influences our Climate Crisis. First and foremost is good to understand that the Military protects commercial interests, that the commercial interests fund the Government- and that the government pays for/to the military. This is the very basic structure of this complex. Starting from the very basic connection between the Climate and military pollution… The production. Every single item produced and its production chain. The need of resources and the pollution that takes place. From the simplest to...

At CICD we are very happy and proud to be partners of Humana People to People, since we started our first volunteer programmes in 1998! Below an introduction from their Progress report - and click on the link further down to read the full report: "Humana People to People spans the globe through 29 independent national member associations. We grew out of a progressive education movement in the 1970s, rooted in the struggle against apartheid and colonialism. Today, we are committed to tackling some of the world’s major humanitarian, social and environmental challenges. Forty years after we began, the needs...

By Melanie Pita, Climate Activist team teacher Hi there. I just came here to write a bit about Permaculture as it is one of my favorite topics. Like the name itself says permaculture is a permanent culture. The main goal of it is to create a perfect ecosystem where everything works like it was a cycle, a living being cycle. Permaculture is not just a way of growing food. Permaculture to an extent is a way of life. We, humans, the ones starting out on applying permaculture techniques, are also part of it all, in the beginning it requires a lot of...

In the middle of the beautiful and peaceful Yorkshire landscape, hunters for profit and fossi fuels have found some very big oil and gas deposits. During the last 8 years, there have been several attempts to start bigger scale fracking or acidisation, and drilling for oil and gas here, but they have met a fierce resistance from the local people. One extraction site in West Newton was closed down after leakage of poisonous chemicals, but now the company is trying to get started again in a neighboring location. Until very recently there was a Monitoring Protection Camp that was manned...

Education is the key to create change Education is the key when we want to create a positive future. The key to reducing poverty, to eliminating gender inequality, to creating a sustainable planet, to preventing needless deaths and illness, and to fostering peace ….. The world needs passionate teachers who are willing and able to act and stand up for the people. Teachers who understand that the world can be a better place for all its living beings. Teachers who teach about the power of community and who can inspire by example. So to be a teacher is really one...

At CICD we have close to a negative carbon foot-print, because of our clothes and shoes recycling project. But we want to become much more sustainable in more areas. The slogan "Think global - act local" says it all -  this is exactly what we practice with our programmes and in the daily life here at the college. We are Another Kind of School - and we also have another kind of exams. It's called a People's Exam. Instead of a panel of experts in a possibly quite narrow field, the exam-board is everyone at the school – all who...

Aitana asked Noemi to tell a little about her life and her experiences from Mozambique. I’m Noemi, I come from Romania, from the part of Transylvania and I studied social work. I always had a special attraction to Africa, I knew that one day I will go and work there. When I was 3 years old I wanted to become a pediatrician so I could go and help the kids in Africa. To become a pediatrician you need biology and chemistry but I didn't have teachers who could gave me the desire to learn and understand these disciplines, so I...

The Climate Activist team invited all of us for a fantastic dinner earlier in the week...it was beautiful, really tasty and well prepared...and: made only from what we have grown in our garden farm: pumpkins, courgettes, different vegetables, potatoes, herbs and chicken! The only exception was a bit of oil, salt and some lemons! To eat this together was truly double happiness - we could enjoy a meal with no chemicals, no plastic waste from the packaging, no air miles transporting it here, the chicken healthy without added hormones...Mmmm! It felt very good that it is possible! Because this points...

By Daniela Morales, Poverty Activist October team 2020 That's right ... it's amazing how in five words (An African Night at CICD) you can summarise in a simple way what a whole week of dedication and teamwork organising an event at school was. But, how did the idea of organising an event emerge, who organised it, how was it to manage and organise it? In this short text I will explain a little more about the life and activities that we develop as students (DI’s, as we say) at our school. When you start your training period or preparation for...

Since I arrived here at CICD, I feel as if many moments of the day are acquiring more value thanks to the sharing of them with other people and I'm very grateful for that. There is a place in Yorkshire, lost between the fields and the English farms, able to recreate that harmony between man and nature that today seems to have been lost. Here you can walk alongside the trees with squirrels, rabbits and, when you’re lucky, roe deer. Peace and silence accompany you throughout the day, especially in the early morning or late at night. In the midst...

WHY I DECIDED TO VOLUNTEER We say we love Nature, but do we really care about it? We say we love people, but do we know what is going on around the world? Do we know something about pollution, hunger, slavery, illnesses, forced prostitution and child abuse? Maybe we know a lot of things, maybe we can watch a touching doumentary and feel deep emotions for an hour or two, but then we always go back to our little structured reality made of work, family, hobbies and stuff. I was growing up between school, family and friends, struggling with what...

Hello! I am Margarita, the result of a love between Colombia and Spain, a person curious about the world, an admirer of the different and a believer in human kindness. I am writing to share my story and encourage you if at any time you decide to take a different step in life. I grew up in the country of magical realism, a place for which I feel immensely grateful for having given me love, study and work at times when it was not always easy. After working more than 10 years in the corporate world and with great achievements,...

My personal journey as a Development Instructor with CICD My name is Agustina Bastías Solis, I am 28 years old and I am from Chile. I am currently at CICD waiting to restart my program that was interrupted in Botswana due to Covid 19, although my trip started much earlier. Before coming to CICD in July 2019, I was working in my country as a psychologist in programs related to the protection and the restitution of the rights of children with difficult backgrounds. At that time, my motivation for volunteering was related to acquiring new work experiences and growing personally...

World Water Week 2020 Accelerating action for water and climate change! Water is the fundamental source for human development; from nature-based solutions to socio-economic development and human resilience. Water is a key enabler. In fact, water is life! Humana People to People joins the rest of the world in celebrating World Water Week 2020. The five-day event, themed “Water and Climate Change – Accelerating Action”, will focus on innovation, science and all the necessary actions to achieve a climate-resilient future. World Water Week 2020 will be commemorated from 24 - 28 August 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated...

An unexpected summer experience! By Sara Simson, Poverty Activist teacher at CICD My first experience as a Development Instructor (DI) teacher in CICD has been unusual; due to the pandemic my team and I, as all the rest of the world, were really affected by it. Our program had to change and we needed to readapt our life and activities to it. It wasn`t easy for any of us, but together we organised a new routine. Adapting to another daily life As everything else in the program, even the date of the travel to Africa had to change. The start...

Hey! My name is Tomás Cunha, I’m 25 years old and come from Portugal. I’m the current responsible for the garden here at CICD. I first arrived at this college almost 9 months ago. I had just finished my masters in Evolutionary Biology back in Lisbon. After several years of studies, I knew I wanted to experience something different from my reality until then. Something that pushed me a bit away from the course of actions I was taking. I needed to learn more about the world and also about me and what I want. I lived a quite privileged...