By Natalia Benitez, Poverty Activist team August 2023 - getting ready for departure to Youth in Action project, Ndola, Zambia in January 2024! THINGS I NEED FOR THE PROJECT IN AFRICA Traveling to Africa as a volunteer can be an enriching experience, but it is important to prepare properly. Here are essential things I will take with me: 1) Personal hygiene items and basic medical supplies: • Insect repellent and mosquito nets to protect against insect-borne diseases such as malaria. • Sunscreen: The sun in Africa can be intense, and it is best to be protected from the damage that...

By Alejandra Aguilar Bello, Poverty Activist team August 2023 When we are in a programme studying development around the world and we are looking for diversity, inclusion, peace, equality; then how can we talk about an exam to conclude some study periods? Well our People’s Exam is like our school – it’s a “Different Kind of…”! It’s one of the most exciting parts of the programme. It has the objective to conclude and reflect on what we have learned in each period and share it with our audience. So we look for a creative way to present all this. Our...

“Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.” – Nelson Mandela By Mel Pita, Teacher in the Poverty Activist Team / End of October 2023 Hello again… Last time I wrote to you about the second period of the programme – The forces that run the World. Today I will tell you about the current period we are in – Period 3 – The fight of the Poor and Solidarity Humanism. This period lasts for 7 weeks and it is one of the most...

By Estefani Gareca, Poverty Activist Team February 2023 A People´s Exam is the last step in the end of each period of our studies. Specifically, for the 12 month Poverty Activist programme with 5 month study & training period, we have 6 different periods with different themes. All of them have very solid topics related to the history and development of the countries in different parts of the worls, offering us an overview of all the problems our world suffers. We have just concluded our first period called “The Forces that run the World”. During this period, we studied the...

By Monzer Al Moussa, Poverty Activist team August 2022 Hello again, We, the 12 month Poverty Activist team, would like to tell you a little about the great activists that we met during our latest investigation. This investigation was about the reality of the poverty in the UK and the people that are working together to help those facing poverty to better their lives. Maybe it will be easier to present some numbers of the reality of the poverty in UK to help understand the dire need and the fantastic job those activists that we visited are doing: A few...

By Anne Hoejholt, leader of ISET – One World’s distance learning programme. 2021 The world of today presents us with unprecedented challenges and situations. What would a competent education for the 21st century look like? As teachers living in outstandingly fast paced times, it is legitimate to ask ourselves: how can we imagine and design an appropriate education for the 21st century? In other words, what should schools look like, to prepare the students of today for the challenges of tomorrow? In this article, we would like to argue why the current educational system needs to be radically rethought, and...

The 6 R-s: Repair, Reduce, Refuse, Reuse, Recycle, Repeat Our Climate Activist summer programme has just started, and one of the themes they study is the 6 R-s. Maybe you wonder: Does it really makes any difference what I do? The answer is YES – it does! Why re-cycle and repair and reuse..? Our “consumer society” is one of the reasons for rising CO2 emissions, causing global warming and climate change. We are often called "consumers" rather than "citizens". And our habits of shopping and consuming are causing huge environmental problems - because we are so many, and it has...

About the course “The Effects of Industrial Farming” This course is part of the curriculum for the Development Instructor teams, so they can gain a better understanding of the reasons for the huge economic inequality in the world today and why billions of people are living in such poverty – in spite of all the existing resources. After studying The Effects of Industrial Farming it was clear to us that some of the effects of industrial farming are: Rupture of the generational transmission of knowledge of uses and customs of natural resources and good practices. This makes us lose the...

About the course “Wars and Pollution” The consequences of the military on our environment are significant. How come that the huge military complex, that use a big part of state budgets and consume enormous amounts of oil and other resources, are not made to take their responsibility in cutting down to fight the Climate Crisis? To learn about this is one part of understanding the reasons for the Climate Crisis and the imbalance of our world.... My comments to the course “Wars and Pollution” By Iasmin Maionchi from Brazil, Development Volunteer 10 month February team 2020 Today we have studied...

Studies and workshops in our lock down CICD Hello, my name is Mel and I am a teacher at CICD. Today I write to tell you a bit about the past weeks and how we managed to continue with the programmes even in times of Covid-19. Let me tell you about how we rearranged the daily life in the safest way possible. At CICD we were around 30 people a month ago. We changed the whole set up of the school by dividing into 3 groups. 9 Development Instructors (DI-s) plus + 2 teachers are now living in Malawi building...

I remember the first day they told me that I would have to drive on the different side in the car. A challenge was presented and I overcame. And then came the next challenge: driving the van. Same as the car but with a few more meters of metal sheets. I was accompanied during the first few days and then I did it by myself. Satisfactorily I finished my four months of driving in the clothes collection. Good days and bad days! As I highlight freedom, enjoying your own company, being able to leave...

In the end of January our Poverty Activist team is travelling to join DAPP Zambia for 6 months as volunteers - in the ZAMFAM (Zambian Families) projects run by our partner DAPP (Development Aid for People to People) and prevention of malaria and diarrhoea, and in a boarding school for young adults in Nakambala. Before they left they wrote down some thoughts and expectations - and some advice! -  to share with you, while getting ready to continue on this new and fantastic experience....   Carla Barrado, Spain Hello World. I am Spanish and I am 24 years old. I...

Our Poverty Activist team is about to leave to their 6 months service period in Mozambique !! It is a time of emotions and satisfaction feeling! In their 5 months of training they got to know better their team mates with whom they will go to the project. At this moment there are 3 teams, 1 trio and 2 duos, ready to start their service period with all the achievements they have got. One trio is going to work in DNS Macuze, North Mozambique in Zambezia province. DNS Macuze started its activities in 2001 with the...

On Monday, eight people from the previous Gaia team became Development Instructors. I am the youngest of those eight. I am Solveig from Estonia and I recently turned twenty. I arrived here in the end of September and am now a part of the February Poverty Activist team. All of us have contrasting aims for coming to England, but mine is probably a bit different from my teammates. I feel like I am not as accomplished as the people in my team. I only finished high school last year and have not really started my life as an adult yet...

By Zsolt Gyarmati, Hungary, Fighting with The Poor 21 months programme Earlier I had a decent job in the capital of Hungary, I rented an apartment, had a car, had friends and all the “normal” stuff. However I wasn’t satisfied with my life. So I decided to change my life maybe not permanently, but entirely. I wanted to do something meaningful in this rushing and money-centered world. My goal now is to make other people’s life better. If I can make only one single life better, I will be really happy. So I decided to go on a journey and...

By Margarita Barbeiro, Colombia I have heard that if Life takes something from you, it is because it has something bigger prepared on your way… and it is true. One of the biggest challenges that I have experienced this year was to be separated of my family in Colombia and it was incredible the way that my feelings to be far away from home were compensated in CICD this Christmas with a new and amazing experience. The day started with the preparation of the event with only 12 people in total, considering that most of...

By J. Paola Gomez Garzon, Spain I never thought that at the age of 28 I would live the best New Year’s eve of my life. 31st of December 2018, it was three month and 9 days since I arrived to a very special place in the north of England, CICD (College for International Co-operation and Development). Leaving a life of comfort behind, I enlisted to a life changing project to Africa. Everything starts at CICD living in a community, getting to meet new people, new stories and new experiences and sharing mine with them too. So far the Gaia...

On the 24th of September we had the possibility to visit Siemens Gamesa at their training centre in Hull. All this was made possible by Allan and Britta who are working with the Tvind Wind Mill in the Danish town Ulfborg, which was built by volunteers in the 1970’s as the then world’s biggest wind mill . More about the Tvind Wind Mill and its’ relation to Siemens can be read here https://www.tvindkraft.dk/en/a-trailblazing-windmill/the-tvind-windmill-showed-the-way.html Also listen to this https://soundcloud.com/cicd/building-the-biggest-windmill-in-the-world podcast in which our Headmistress Karen who has been one of the volunteers building the Tvindmill speaks about it) While in the...

Every month our school comes together for a very special kind of weekend. Two days dedicated to our school, to our home. The building weekend is a moment for developing practical skills, for painting, repairing and enjoying time all together. Students and teachers join together to make a plan of what needs to be improved in our buildings, then we divide in groups and get down to work! We can’t deny that it’s an exhausting weekend since it demands a lot of physical effort, but we also get the opportunity to join together with a common goal, improve our school,...

Ana and Ryma  About our experience in the projects, the only thing that we can tell you is that it was the experience of our life! When you decide that you want to do something like becoming a Development Instructor you need to be sure that you are prepared to change a lot of things in your life. Since we arrived here we improved a lot our English, we live surrounded by different cultures, different languages, different food, different way of living.  It is amazing the things that we learned when we lived in a community and that we then...