Nigeria it will be!

Although I did not yet receive a formal, written confirmation about my placement, VSO Netherlands called with VSO Nigeria and they gave a spoken confirmation of my placement. Nigeria is a very hierarchic and bureaucratic country and it seems that the person who should sign the letter is currently away. So no-one can sign. But anyway, it seems like it will be fine and I will be really moving to Nigeria in February!

 

Many things are still very vague. I expect most things to become clear only once I started working. I know I will be working as a volunteer manager and training advisor in the National Graduate Volunteer Program. This program offers young people the chance to work as a volunteer. They work mainly in education, helping to improve the quality of education. At the same time, they also gain skills and tools which can help them to improve their chances for employment.

 

Nigeria seems to be a very interesting country. As VSO writes: Nigeria is dynamic, vibrant, infinitely interesting, frequently frustrating, but ultimately, when you contribute to addressing Nigeria’s several development challenges you are contributing to the vision of a world without poverty.

 

Some facts about Nigeria’s development situation:

• Nigeria has a lot of natural recourses, including petroleum, gas, tin, iron and many more. Petroleum and petroleum products account for 95% of the country’s export. But, agriculture is still the major employer of the country.
• Nigeria accounts for 14% of sub-Sahara Africa’s GDP and is the second African economy after South Africa.
• Nigerian economy is still growing, average 6,5% a year.
• Nigeria experiences a high level of youth unemployment, which rose from 21.1% in 2010 to 23.9% in 2011, with rural unemployment at 25.6%. Unemployment is highest amongst youth aged 15-24 years.
• Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation, with a quarter of the continent’s extreme poor. More than 100 million Nigerians (64%) live on less than € 1,50 a day.
• Nigeria has 10% of the world’s children out of school. Adult male literacy is 75% and female illiteracy is 57%.
• In Nigeria the under-five mortality is 157 per 1000 live births (makes it 946.000 under-five deaths a year). This makes it 10% of the world’s child and maternal deaths.
• Religion is important in Nigeria, the amount of Muslims, Christians and people having traditional believes vary per region. Kwara state, where I will be working, has about as many Muslims as Christians.
• Nigeria has an HIV prevalence of 3.1%

 

In short, if no progress is made in Nigeria, the Millennium Development Goals will not be achieved in Africa.

 

So, I expect Nigeria to be a country full of challenges, but also a country where my new colleagues and I can really fight poverty.

 

To be continued!

 

 

BTW, for those of you who are worried about safety, I will be living in Ilorin (a bit south and more west of Abuja, the red dot in the middle) while most problems are in the north. To give you an idea of the size of the country; that is as close as Enschede is from Milan.

Skills

So many things can happen in a short time. In the past few weeks, I got a job offer from VSO, took one more VSO course, worked my last day in the synagogue and emptied my office there.
 

Regarding the job offer, I got an offer in Nigeria and I decided to apply for it. This means I filled in the application form. Now, the organization which I might be working for from February, is thinking about my application. They don’t have a choice of several volunteers, but they can refuse me and hope they will find someone else. In that case, VSO will look for another placement for me.  It looks very nice though, so keep your fingers crossed!
 

The VSO course was very interesting again. It is nice to spend a weekend with people who are ready to work in development countries, like me. The training was called Skills for Working in Development. And that was really what it was about.
 

One of the most important topics of the weekend was facilitation. We as volunteers are not the ones who have to change (the work of) an organization; the organization should change itself when they see the need. The only thing we can do is facilitating them to do this. Quite a challenge for me, I am normally the one who easily says; o I can do it! I should really change this habit into empowering the people and say: o YOU can do this!
 

Other important topics were building bridges (another challenge for me, take a lot of time to get to know people and don’t try to do business too soon), corruption and dealing with conflicts. Again, no one tried to give us a brighter picture than reality will be. But all of us were very enthusiast about our plans, so it was a very motivating weekend again.
 

Keep your fingers crossed!

 

SKIWD participants,
people heading to Pemba (Tanzania), Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ghana,
Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, Uganda

Preparing to Volunteer

This weekend I had my first VSO course. We got quite some information, but we mainly exchanged ideas, experiences, knowledge, we discussed dilemmas we will most likely face and played some games and learned how difficult your role as a volunteer can be. In short, we were Preparing 2 Volunteer!

The weekend made me even more excited about the VSO adventure I will hopefully start in a few months. I am very happy that I chose for VSO and not for another NGO. VSO is special because it does not simply hand out money. It sends people to share their skills and knowledge. And the good thing about this is, that volunteers will really share skills, teach the people so they can develop themselves and their communities.

But, it will not only be nice and easy. During this weekend, we got really prepared for the difficulties we will face. We saw movies of people who got infected with HIV during their placement, movies of people who could not at all communicate with the people in their area, people who ended up teaching English instead of doing the job they accepted. We discussed how to deal with people who don’t really want a change, eventhough you as a volunteer think it will be an improvement. I think it is very good we get prepared for this. But I am happy that the weekend ended with this happy movie, and I hope that I will also look back at my VSO experience like this!

 

Welcome

Welcome to my blog! I will try to keep you all updated about my VSO volunteering journey. I hope it will be interesting for you.

For now I will not update it so often, but I hope to post more often once I moved and started my adventure.

So, stay tuned!