My experience in Bolivia
My experience in Bolivia has been very interesting this far. I arrived just over three weeks ago from Vancouver, Canada. During that time I have been working for Yo Voy a Ti and have learned a lot about myself as well as getting a great firsthand look at life in Bolivia. Through Yo Voy a Ti I was connected with two external organizations for my volunteer placements. Between the two organizations I work five to six hours a day, five days a week.
My mornings are spent working at EIFODEC, a center for disabled people. It’s such a great center, their main goal is the respectful integration of disabled people into society in such a way they are fine equal opportunity to contribute and be a part of the community. My work there is mainly in a support capacity. I assist the professors during classes, both physical and academic. My favorite part of this position is the dance classes. As I have a background in dance and with these classes I feel I am able to make the greatest contribution to the participants. These classes are aimed at improving general motor skills as well as balance, focus and team building. In addition to the dance and academic classes, the participants are strongly encouraged into sports with the ultimate goal of preparing them to participate in special ‘Olympic’ game events. It is really wonderful group of people to have the privilege to be a part of, even for a short while.
My afternoons are spent at the largest women and children’s hospital in Cochabamba. There I work for an organization called “Movimiento Sonrisa” who provides volunteers to the hospital’s child surgery ward. I have to admit this is my favorite placement. Here we get firsthand hospital experience while working with wonderful children. My afternoons are spent either playing with the young patients in the arts and games center or on the wards with the babies. We feed and comfort them. It’s a really fulfilling placement where you are really able to see the impact you’re having right away.
Overall my experience working in Bolivia for Yo Voy a Ti has been wonderful. I wish I had more time here but sadly I have to go home soon.
All I can say is that I will be back and I will definitely keep making time in my life to volunteer and give back to others.
Hannah Gummeson.
BASKET PROJECT IN UGANDA
The basket project
Yo voy a Ti foundation in Uganda has a basket project it is implementing together with EvaMia Interiors in Norway. The organization is helping young girls in the slums of Kampala to create their own employment and equipping them with skills in basket making. Some of the girls already know how to make the baskets but have initially been challenged with costs of materials to make them and finding markets for the baskets.
Yo Voy a Ti Uganda is providing the skills training and EvaMia Interiors will provide the market to support these basket makers. The baskets will also be sold within the region with Yo Voy a Ti providing assistance in looking for market so anyone that wants high quality and beautiful baskets please support our girls. Most of the girls are thrilled to be learning a new skill with a potential for creating their own income generating projects.
Word from the trainer
I think that Yo Voy a Ti Foundation in Uganda is giving a lot of young people opportunities to grow economically. The skills that you are giving these young girls are going to help them become self reliant. I am glad to work with the girls because they are eager to learn and are very motivated by eventually selling their baskets even on an international market. It is a good thing for them because most have been idle and doing nothing yet they have responsibilities like taking care of their children.
Word from one of the girls (Mary)
I have no job and yet I have a child, I need some sort of skills to help me make some income in order to feed my child. Getting this training with Yo voy a Ti Uganda is helping me with that. I thank them because I see a future where I can make these baskets and sell them to make a living. Of course it is going to challenge me to look for market for my baskets but I know I will have to do it in order to benefit. Also Yo Voy a Ti will be helping. The beginning is not easy but I am learning.
About the baskets
These baskets are made using natural materials such as dried banana stems, banana fibers, reeds and millet straws e.t.c. It is interesting to learn that the different materials used represent the different regions of Uganda where the basket originates. The colors used are all natural dyes. The baskets are made for different purposes which determine their shape and size. They can be used to store food stuffs, fruits or as decorations and wall hangings. It is also possible to for instance make them in various shapes like jewelry boxes to keep one’s jewelry or small pieces of cosmetics.
Some of the baskets
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What does it mean to be a project coordinator for a small non-profit organization in Bolivia?
I started with Yo Voy A Ti just shy of six months ago. Having worked previously in a centre for disadvantaged children in homework support, I was ready to sink my teeth into a bit of responsibility and a bigger challenge (not that simultaneously attending to a room of boisterous children and their sometimes futile homework was not difficult).
Project coordinator was a title I’d never held, having never worked professionally in community development before. Would my combined studies, volunteer and intern experience be enough? Was my Spanish up to scratch? Did I know what I was doing? Would I disappoint the people who hired me? Would I help, really?
Before any new challenge there are always these swarms of doubt. Now, six months later, I hold the answers to these questions in memories and solid experience. What I needed was, more or less, the following:
The desire to do good. I’ve learned over and over that this small wish entails a high demand of patience, time, effort and perseverance. This is no miniscule task. Doing good is probably one of the easiest things to want and one of the hardest things to accomplish in a community development sense. How do you measure it? How do you know? How do you prevent harm from being done?
Mobile School
This leads to humility. A project coordinator, volunteer or employee in any NGO needs no small degree of humility. The desire to do good does not automate the capacity to do so. We have as much to learn as we have to teach. Personally I’ve learned so much by focusing and promoting what others know and want to share. From quechua phrases to street slang, how to make a bracelet to being taught the rules of a game made of chalk and stones. The resilience, strength and innovation of people who live on the street – who are survivors despite police violence, discrimination, isolation from society and histories of family break-down is a lesson I will not forget; nor the ceaseless energy of children, the affection and admiration they give so willingly and the creativity they show in making the street or an empty marketplace their playground.
Another challenge these past months has been the balancing of volunteers wants with the needs of the populations we are working with. Although a volunteer may express a desire to work in a certain area, our end goal is to help the populations we are working with over satisfying preferences of volunteers – which, albeit important, does not take priority in this instance.
There is the need to be flexible, to adapt to the rhythm of the children and youth we work with. They live and exist often by their own rules and the core philosophy of Yo Voy A Ti is to literally go to them and not have them come to us. On a practical level this means we enter their space, their community and their lives. Sometimes they’ll be there, sometimes they won’t. Sometimes they’re interested in the mobile school, English school, football school and sometimes they simply are not. One needs to be flexible with this and not force participation. There needs to be flexibility in the planning of activities, themes, objectives. Like Regina George from mean girls, sometimes you have to stop trying to make fetch happen, it’s not going to happen! Rather, adapt, evolve, learn, keep going.
And certainly not the least of all is joyfulness. Not a characteristic you ever seen written on job descriptions but essential if your job demands that your levels of energy and positivity affect the people you are meant to lead and the population they are meant to help. A smile, a sense of joy, a light-heartedness when volunteers are tired or populations are distracted or disinterested. Joyfulness ensures that you are a light, a starting point, a smile amongst many stern faces.
As my time here wraps up, I will not forget all that I have learned here and will surely bring all of the memories home with me. I pass the torch to Fernando the new coordinator who goes above and beyond all of the requirements for this role. Unlike a foreigner passing through (myself), Fernando was born and grew up in Cochabamba. Already he has taught us the magical power of a clown nose to make children laugh, how to make balloon animals and figures, how to laugh at ourselves and how to give responsibility to a child, praise them, remind them to use manners, impart a message and always, always everything with a smile.
There is such great relief and comfort in the knowledge that Yo Voy A Ti is in good hands. Congratulations Fernando and a big welcome to the YVAT team!
Grace
Football School in Bolivia
HELLO EVERYONE!
Kjetil here, the Norwegian volunteer.
In almost 5 months I have had the privilege to be the football coordinator of the Yo Voy a Ti in Cochabamba. Apart from being in charge of the football trainings I have also been helping with the main project of the mobile school. Since January I have worked with kids in Takoloma and Mercado Campesino. Now I have recently started with the new opened football school in Quillacollo.
There are few things in life I love more than football. It is a game I have played since I could walk, and I still remember kicking the ball into the wall of my house, dribbling in the primary school corridors and pissing my neighbor off for kicking my ball in his car several times by accident. Upon the years I have had so many great memories with football, the feeling of teamwork, sharing ups and downs, and all the tears and cheers we have had. As it all have gotten more serious now I have started to enjoy other sides of the game, such as watching games, experience football culture and most of all the coaching part. I have had some very good trainers over the years, and I have also learned to take out the best from every one of them. But to take it out on the boys and girls down here is something different.
Takoloma, Mercado Campesino and Quillacollo are all neighborhoods filled with potential and coming youth, and I feel lucky to spend some time with them during the week. Here is a little explanation of what’s going on.
Takoloma is a place where the kids are in the risk of ending up on the street due to their conditions at home. Because the differences among the kids are so big and because there is no obligation for the kids to come it is pretty difficult to do coaching or train them to be better footballers. So therefore the focus is as simple as having fun and just plays with them.
Mercado Campesino is suffering high poverty, and it is a slummy area seen from my point of view. It is a marked place where the kids don’t have the resources to have a very good education and where the parents work as fruit sellers. Here the focus is the same as it is in Takoloma. But here there are mostly boys playing. And it is all about having fun.
Quillacollo is one of the suburb towns to Cochabamba and it is a good 30 minute ride out there. Out here Bolivia is getting real. Everything is more crazy, louder and more out of control, except from the football school. This is a football school that was developed together by the local church and religion has got an obvious influence on the work that is done over there. David is the leader of the school, and he is doing such a great job. He’s getting help from some mums, and me and some other volunteers from YVAT. It is just getting better to work with these kids. That’s it because the level are higher, and I am able to do more of a training session and improve their football abilities and make them smarter soccer players by teaching them how to play. And after just a couple of session I can already see progression in terms of keeping possession and talking to their teammates.
In Quillacollo there is another mayor differences that does not exist in the other places. The Christian influence. Carl Marx once said: “Religion is opium for the people,” and here you can see what he means of it. From Norway where I am from, we live good lives, live in safety and an overflowing wealth. In Norway, the religion is not as important as it is here. In this area they really respect God. I personally believe that this is helping them to get a better life, in terms of hoping for something better or that they one day will meet Jesus.
In 3 weeks I will take off to the World-cup in Brazil. It is a very bittersweet feeling that in 3 weeks my Bolivian adventure will be over, but at the same time, it would be a massive lie to say that I am not excited about going to the World Cup in Brazil. My time here has been an unforgettable experience but as it all comes to an end, I’m also excited about seeing my friends and family again. It is an adventure I will never forget, to see a kid learn from you, and take advantage from your teaching or your actions are indescribable. The rewarding smiles, honest questions, their innocence, or simply just watching a kid growing up is moving. It has only been 5 months, but for sure I’ll be back one day.
Kjetil
CAN YOU DO VOLUNTEER WORK IF YOU ARE ALREADY 40?
Can you do volunteer work if you are already over 40? Is this not the kind of thing for youngsters and students having just finished school? Have I still the proper attitude to do such work? Where can I find an organization to do the right thing?
These are some of the questions I have been thinking about when planning my sabbatical from my profession as a teacher in a German secondary school. My name is Michael and I wanted to travel around the world this year, but also do some volunteer work that is somehow related to my regular job. So first I was considering some kind of internship in a school in Bolivia but then I got to know via “World Unite” the project of Yo Voy a Ti in Cochabamba and found it very fascinating.
Dia del niño
After travelling for about five months I stayed eight weeks in Cochabamba volunteering for Yo Voy a Ti. The first impressions of the life and environment of many children we are working with have been kind of shocking sometimes, but soon I got to know their great openness and cordiality.
Some particular experiences at CAICC, a home for children whose parents are in jail, and on the “Día del Niño” (Children´s day) has been very memorable and showed me the very different realities in the lives of Bolivian children. Of course, many kids grow up with love and care of their families and go to ordinary schools. Many others, however, live on the street or in very poor neighborhoods and get very little education.
English School
Working with the mobile school in public is so different from teaching in a school and has been therefore very inspiring for me and my work as a teacher. And furthermore the good relationship and teamwork with the other “younger” volunteers at Yo Voy a Ti has been a very good experience I will miss. Working and travelling with them has been great fun.
So if I had to answer the questions I had before starting as a volunteer I must say: yes you can volunteer at any age but maybe you should be prepared to spend more time than I had, let’s say at least three months. And you will learn a lot about life and people in Bolivia and of course about yourself, too.
This week I’m going to finish my volunteer work in Cochabamba and will go on travelling a little bit more through Bolivia. But I’m sure I will do that with a lot of more understanding of the country and its people than if I had been here as a tourist only.
Michael Rapp
Meet Alex, our first volunteer at Yo Voy a Ti Uganda
This blog post was written by Alex from the UK, our first volunteer at Yo Voy a Ti in Kampala, Uganda.
So far I have been in Uganda for about a month. I visited here on holiday about 10 years ago, but it was a different experience to living here. Kampala itself is an amazing city, the whizzing and winding of so many different types of transport all somehow fitting together. People are always keen to help you out (as in most times you don’t need to ask, they will come to you) with any kind of touristy problems you have as a newbie to the city and because they all speak English it makes the process a lot easier. Yet with the local tongues, Kampala’s being Lugandan, there is still the enjoyment of learning another language. The fact that all Kampalan’s are bilingual is very admirable. There is a lot to take in, the traffic, the food, the weather etc. but certainly none of it is over-whelming, just exciting.
Kampala, Uganda
I found Yo Voy a Ti from searching for volunteering in Kampala online, I was already coming here due to my partner’s job in Kampala. I was very impressed by the quality and organisation of Yo Voy a Ti and having a Skype conversation before coming over was comforting and helpful. My background before coming to Uganda has been in business studies and IT, since I have been here I have been helping with looking at help with micro-financing online, seeing what resources already exist on the web to help our cause. The future plan is to help train women who have just passed vocational courses in a range of different areas, such as hairdressing, tailoring and catering to help them set up a new business. Learning the basics of running a business will be a critical element in the success of their new businesses and so I am looking forward to being able to see how I can help them.
As well as helping with the micro-financing project I am also helping in the football training that is near Mulago hospital in Katanga. These sessions are very fun, although I did get badly sunburnt in my first week! I am now going to be wearing a cap each week for sure… These are kids with sadly very little prospects in life, but you wouldn’t assume that from the eagerness they show every week and these sessions help give them the belief that such eagerness can be translated into productivity and success in life. This makes these sessions more than just about football training, but they are getting better at playing week after week!
Alex playing football with the children at Yo Voy a Ti’s football school in Kampala, Uganda
I feel very privileged to be in a position in my life where I can provide this volunteering help. I know that Yo Voy a Ti has been established in a manner which can make a genuine difference to those they are looking to help and I feel lucky to have been selected by them to help provide this help. I hope during the time I am here I can experience the success the organisation is aiming for.
Goodbye from Director in Bolivia, Hanne Hellvik
Dear Friends,
It has been a huge privilege to work with “Yo voy a Ti” and serve the underprivileged in Cochabamba for almost two years. Although I am sad to leave, I do so knowing that “Yo voy a Ti Bolivia” is in good hands with the new director, Álvaro Dante González Gámez. I believe that the foundation will continue growing, and reach out to help more people living in poverty.
Building up “Yo Voy a Ti” with my dear husband Alejandro Aguilar, from being a very small local foundation, to become an international organization with more and better established projects, has been a roller coaster with several ups and downs. It has been many challenges, a lot of hard work, and long days. But mostly it has been very rewarding, and I have learned more than I could ever have dreamt about at the age of 25.
My dream has always been to have my own NGO, and I would thank “Yo voy a Ti” and my husband for fulfilling this dream. I also thank everyone that supported me in expanding “Yo voy a Ti” to Uganda. Also a big appreciation to Esther Namatovu and Rogers Kaliisa that is doing an incredible good job there with the limited recourses we have provided them with. I also would like to thank everyone that have supported us in Bolivia as volunteers or financially.
I feel incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to be a part of “Yo voy a Ti”. I truly love this work, and I am proud of how far we have come in the last two years. Our work to empower children and youth in street situation is deeply meaningful to me and it will be difficult to give up this work as my full-time focus. I will very much miss all the amazing children and youth we have worked with, along with my great colleagues, all the volunteers, partner organizations and persons that have supported us on the way.
That being said, it is now time for me to move home to my dear home country Norway, which I miss much after four years living abroad. Alejandro Aguilar, will soon also leave the fulltime work in the foundation to come to Norway, thinking about our future. However, we will still both be in the directory, and help with what we can from there, and supervise the foundation in both Bolivia and Uganda, together with Håkon Hellvik.
I would like to welcome Álvaro Dante González Gámez to “Yo voy a Ti”, and wish him the best in taking over this challenging but satisfying role. Dante have long experience from NGOs in Bolivia and internationally from by others Save the Children, Compassion and UNICEF, and I know he will be able to bring many great contributions to the organization. Furthermore, I have great confidence in him.
Farewell,
Hanne
Picture: Fred Alanes Fuertes (New HR-coordinator), Álvaro Dante González Gámez (New Director Bolivia), Alejandro Aguilar (President of the Board) and Hanne Hellvik (Old Director Bolivia, new Vise-president of the Board).
New football school – Quillacollo
Hi everyone,
Yesterday we had the honor to open a new football school for the children in Quillacollo, outside Cochabamba city. There was in total 36 children participating in two hours filled with joy and fun for both the children and volunteers. First, warming up with games, and secondly playing football. In the end the children got snacks, and David gave a talk about God’s love.
The new opened football school will take place in Quillacollo every Wednesday afternoon. And we would like to thank David for the good job he is doing as a volunteer, and for leading this project.
In the meanwhile are our established football projects in Takoloma and Mercado Campecino, still running weekly with the coach Kjetil.
– Hanne
Voluntourism; more harm than good?
Volunteer tourism, also called “voluntourism”, is one of the fastest growing areas of the tourism industry, prompting a debate on whether or not this is a positive or negative trend.
This week Encounter published the article “Is ‘voluntourism’ the new colonialism?”. The author argues that in many cases, volunteer programs in developing countries can do more harm than good due to a variety of factors: lack of volunteer skills and cultural/linguistic knowledge, accommodation of volunteers’ short time constraints, use of resources for expensive modern amenities for volunteers, and many other potential problems unique to project location and nature.
At Yo Voy a Ti we receive many international volunteers that contribute to our projects. This debate is therefore highly relevant to us as an organization that aims to promote development through our program as well as accommodate those who wish to donate their time and money for our cause. We are very cautious of the many potential pitfalls that can affect volunteer tourism projects, and while we consider ourselves first and foremost a development organization with a commitment to our social mission, we also strive to provide both the best possible experience for our volunteers and help them reach their goal of becoming valuable contributors in the lives of the less-fortunate.
We are highly aware of the problems that can arise when trying to balance these two goals, and it is out of this awareness which comes our high standards for the volunteers that we receive. We only take in volunteers who express a positive attitude and willingness to work through any unexpected inconveniences that come with living in a developing nation. Our volunteers are expected to have a basic level of Spanish in order to be able to effectively work with the children and adolescents, and we strive to find volunteers with skills that can be applied to our projects, not the other way around. The most important quality that we look for in volunteers, however, is a positive attitude and a sincere desire to improve the world and themselves. We have had volunteers with high university degrees, work experience from other Latin American countries, and perfect Spanish, that were not able to do a very good job with the population we work with. On the other hand, we have had volunteers come to us straight out of high school with very little formal experience or training who were able to leave a lasting positive impact on our programs simply by virtue of having the right attitude.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that we think that skills are not important. We train all volunteers that we receive before they are allowed to start their work. We demand at least basic Spanish skills for work in the mobile school, and fluent Spanish for work with the population living on the street. We have workshops for them to learn about the culture, norms, and the background of the foundation, and methodology of all of our development projects.
Another concern raised in the debate about “voluntourism” is that the local population with whom organizations work can sometimes be treated as a tourist attraction, or what some would call “slum tourism”. This has actually been a concern for us, especially related to the group living on the street. And we therefore have a policy that volunteers who are staying for less than six months will not be able to work with the population living on the streets. We do not want the street population, especially the children, to constantly be forming bonds with volunteers who are staying for only a few weeks. Many of these homeless individuals have been abandoned their whole lives by people they love, and so we hope to offer some stability with our programs, rather than enabling the continuous heartbreak cause by a constant influx and outflux of volunteers.
Yet another concern in the debate is the issue of international volunteers taking job opportunities away from local people. At Yo Voy a Ti, this has not been an issue. Our volunteers provide a supplemental contribution to our projects, where we have some local paid employees. Further, the fees that the volunteers pay provide us with an income that we can use to expand our programs and hire more local teachers, doctors, and administrators. This insures our economic sustainability. The constant presence, support, and contributions (both monetary and occupational) of volunteers helps us by providing funding for our programs and employee salaries, manpower and assistance for our employees at the projects, and also helps to create and foster international connections and networks that can benefit all of society in making the world a smaller place.
This blog is a place to learn about everything that has to do with Yo Voy a Ti, and we hope that with this entry, you can learn a bit more about how we run our organization and why it is run the way it is. We take very seriously the concerns raised in the debate about volunteer tourism and its merits and pitfalls, and are taking every effort to ensure that we are a responsible and contributive organization.
– Joe and Hanne
Yo Voy a Ti 