From Ryma about Journal period

Hello! I’m Ryma, a DI from the 18 months program.  The project that I chose was Child Aid Chibombo. I chose this project because we can work in many areas like pre-schools, clinics, agriculture, Women’s club, Youth club…there is always something to do in the communities.

Me and my team felt really welcome in the communities and in the projects,  we felt like with family. We learned a lot from them, especially things from daily life that we never realized - for example how to repair a bicycle in a very easy way.

How simple things can become so important in our lives!

Children were everywhere! So we could have the grateful chance to work with them and to enjoy their company. We gave classes in English, French, Science, Math … Actually we did everything that we could.

We had a lot of good and bad experiences, but this is how we learn. One of the good experiences was the interaction with people from the community. They received us in their house with all the good intentions.

One of the bad experiences that we faced was the delays because of bureaucracy and the bicycles that were always broken…

It is very important to share the good experiences with people so they get more motivation to do something - like to « stand up from the chair and do something ! » and not only talk about it. But also to share the bad experiences is important, to open the eyes and to try to change the ways.

After our wonderful and productive six months in Child Aid Chibombo in Zambia we returned to CICD, and there we wanted to share everything about our project in Africa.

We started to make the plan for travel period called « Bringing to the Public ».  Is a way of sharing our experiences not just with our colleagues from CICD, but in Europe too.

First of all we made a plan for which countries we should go to present in, taking into consideration the budget that we had and the money to spend.

We made a good plan going to countries where we had places to sleep for free.

With the budget and motivation we had we travelled from England to Portugal (our first destination), there we held presentations in the north, centre and south.  One of the good things during the travel period is that you can travel to share the experiences and getting to know a small part of the world and at the same time to meet very nice people and creating friendship.

Our next destination was Netherlands, we held there a presentation in a cultural center, libraries and in an unexpected place: the hostel where we stayed a few days. It was one of the best presentations, people got very interested and the environment was friendly.

The next stop was in Germany where we helped in a big event of Humana People to People. Then we went to Czech Republic to some schools and Universities.

During the travel period we had the opportunity to  visit some cities doing a little bit of tourism. It’s always good for our learning!

In each place we stayed in hostels, in very good friend’s house or couchsurfing. People received us with big hospitality.

One of the best presentations we had was the one in Rotterdam hostel, we asked the receptionist if we could do a presentation and they said yes! So let’s move! At night in the living room we invite the hosts to come to see a presentation about one project in Zambia and Botswana.

They got really interested to join, and the living room step by step got full. It was a friendly and informal presentation, with a lot of questions and opinions.

Sharing experiences with others, and receive experiences from others it’s productive for ourselves. From travel period and presentations we did i think people can discover a little part from themselves that want to change the world or make a difference by volunteering in one of the projects in Africa or India.