Global Poverty Monitor

Can you outline one of the happiest moments over there?

I met an amazing man named Alexandre Nhamilando (Alex) while I was in Mozambique. He is a World Vision employee in a rural area in Tete, whose job it is to translate letters to and from sponsored children and their sponsors. He accompanied us everywhere we went while we were in Tete and acted as our translator. Some of the happiest times I had were times spent with Alex. He has an amazing life story to tell, which is great because he loves to talk. We had some really happy times together, learning equally from each other. After we returned home, Alex was flown to Australia with another Mozambique World Vision employee to visit each Australian state and speak at youth conventions. Alex’s last stop was Perth before flying back to Mozambique, and he stayed at my house with my parents for a weekend. It was the most surreal feeling to know that there is
an authentic African man, on his first trip to Australia, staying in your guest bedroom! We tried to show him all the sights during his short time here, and I don’t know who enjoyed the stay more: Alex or me. We still keep in regular contact now through letters, emails and phone calls, although Alex refuses to understand the time difference and continues to wake the whole family up at 3am :-).

People need educating in all aspects of the AIDS virus. There are still many affected people who believe that having sex with a virgin will cure AIDS. People need educating in various methods of birth control, which then need to be made available at low cost.

One of the most positive experiences I had in Mozambique was witnessing a group of women who we called the Sweet Potato Ladies. This was a group of volunteers, local Mozambique women, who had been trained by World Vision staff to educate other local people in various things such as birth control, nutrition and the importance of breastfeeding infants. The thing that was amazing to me was that these women were reaching out to the peers on their own level. African people love to sing and dance. They do it at school, at church, in their homes, and basically whenever something good or bad happens. It is a huge part of the African culture, and an important way that they communicate to one another. So these ‘Sweet Potato Ladies’ made up song and dance numbers and performed plays to get their messages across. They would sing a song about nutrition, and then act out a play where a woman loses a baby because she didn’t eat the healthy things that a doctor told her to eat. You could just tell that the messages really were getting out to the people, because they were being approached at their own level. While lectures and booklets work well for us here; song, dance and drama work well in Africa.

The most valuable thing that I got out of the study tour was to understand the different ways that people can help, and that before we can really help, we need to fully understand the problem.

I learned a lot about the various ways that people ‘help’ while I was away. On one particular day, we visited a day hospital for AIDS babies. While called a hospital, this was really nothing more than a row of beds, a place for mothers to sit with their babies who have no chance of survival. It was heartbreaking to see these babies and to know that nothing could be done for them. This hospital affected all of us, and we started discussing what we could do when we got home. It was suggested by one of the Ambassadors that we could send money for paint for the walls, to make the hospital brighter inside. I came to understand that this kind of ‘help’ gives us the quick fix that we are all looking for. It doesn’t mean that are hearts aren’t in the right place, on the contrary, but it does mean that we are searching for the quick answer so that we can live our lives satisfied that we have done something, made a difference in someone else’s life, without considering whether what we did was of any help at all.

What really needs to be done to fix this hospital is to fix the reason it’s there in the first place. The AIDS epidemic is getting
worse all the time, and something needs to be done to stop it. The drugs are there, but the pharmaceutical companies have the market so under control that it is impossible for ‘home brand’ medicines to be made available at a fraction of the cost.

I discovered that while people may genuinely agree that there are people living in poverty that desperately need our help, there are very different ways that they can go about giving that help. When we give, we do what we think needs to be done to ‘fix’ a situation. I think it is a difficult thing indeed to overlook what is pleasing to us, and makes us feel good, to doing what is actually needed. This involves looking outside our own cultural and personal values and really accepting those of another person.

I admit that I am guilty of this time and time again. I frequently send Kantet letters and parcels, and often find myself sending him things that I think he should have, that make me feel better about his life. I think that if he has this game, or this toy, his life will be better by my standards, and that helps me to sleep at night. It is a very difficult thing, one that I have yet to master, to really think about what this child needs to make his life better. He needs an education, and he needs training in skills that will help his family. He needs an ongoing source of food, and access to clean water and medical care.

What sort of things did you help out with over there? (specific examples please)

While we were in Maputo we played the part of tourists. We stayed in a nice hotel and did a lot of shopping and sightseeing. We went to some historically significant places in Maputo, and also drove through some slum areas, but we were not permitted to interact with local people as World Vision Ambassadors. It was very different in Tete, however. While we were there we stayed in traditional African huts, and wore World Vision shirts whenever we were out. We ate with the local people, danced with the kids, and slept with the bugs :-). I found that part of the study tour much more rewarding, and it felt great to interact with local people on a personal level after a few days of being a tourist. Even still, we didn’t do a lot to help out as such. We were treated like royalty wherever we went, which was nice in some ways but also made me feel quite uncomfortable. These are the people we are there to help, yet we sit in the chairs while they sit on the dusty floor, and we visit their homes and eat one of their goats that they have just killed, and bananas off their own trees. In honesty, we did a lot of looking and not a lot of helping, which was not what I had expected. I had to change my thinking while I was away, and use the trip as a ‘fact finding mission’, to work out for myself where the help really is needed.

When did you travel in 2005 and how many were part of your group?
We travelled for 11 days in January 2005. There were eight in our group ¡V one Youth Ambassador from each State and two chaperones from the Melbourne office.

Where did you actually go?
We flew from Perth to Johannesburg, South Africa, and spent one night and part of a day there. We then flew to Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique, and stayed there for three nights. After that we flew to the province of Tete, in the north-west part of Mozambique, and stayed there for another five nights. On the way home we had one last night in Maputo, before flying home with a short stopover in Johannesburg.

How long did you stay?
Eleven days in total.

What made you commit to such a huge challenge? Have you always been interested in helping others?

I had been sponsoring a child in Kenya, Kantet Sentero, since 2000 (when I was 16), and had also been volunteering with a local
volunteer group raising money for World Vision. When the chance came to apply for the Ambassadorship it just seemed perfect, like it was actually designed for me. It was the perfect way for me to further my interest in helping the people living in poverty in Africa, and to learn more about my own sponsored child and his life. I really believe that the study tour was especially rewarding for me, on another level to that of the other study tour winners. I was older than the other Ambassadors, and I also thought a lot about my own sponsored child while I was in Mozambique. I feel that the things I saw in Mozambique helped me to understand the life and daily struggles of Kantet, and it also showed me that way that child sponsorship can dramatically change the lives of children and their families. When I applied for the Ambassadorship I was told that it would require a lot of time and effort on my part, particularly after returning from the study tour, but I welcomed the opportunity. I had finally been given a chance to really make a difference.

So in 2005 you were chosen to become a Youth Ambassador for World Vision, how did it come about that you were chosen?

I did the 40 Hour Famine in 2004, and completed an application form to apply for the Ambassadorship. Applicants had to raise at least $160 before applying, and I had raised $642. I was contacted a few months later and had a phone interview, and was then asked to come into the office in Perth for another interview. I also had to make a presentation at the interview, so I spoke about my sponsored child, and then the following week I was phoned and asked to participate in a videophone interview with head office in Melbourne. I was also
told that there were now only three people left in the running, and that one of the three had pulled out for personal reasons. I went to the office and met with the other contestant, Joanne, who I have since become good friends with. I was pretty nervous during the
videophone interview, but it was quite informal and I relaxed after a while. I then found out the following week that I had been successful.

After I returned home from the Mozambique trip, I was approached by the Australian Dolly magazine, who wanted to do an article on the trip. I participated in an online interview, which was then edited into a one-page article. In the following days I’ll post some of the questions from the online interview, and will finally post the finished article.

For the past two weeks I’ve been holding a competition in an attempt to generate new traffic to my blog. Anyone who either posted a link to my blog, or commented on any of my entries, would get a point. The person with the most points after two weeks would have a goat purchased in their name for a family in Myanmar.

This was my first comp and I was really interested to see how it would pan out. It achieved its number one goal of driving more traffic to my blog – I’ve had consistently high numbers of visitors since the comp started. For this, I would like to thank The New Australian, Activist Mommy and Parenting the Adopted for linking to my competition. My stats showed that much of my new traffic generated from your sites, so I thank you for sharing your traffic with me.

To be honest, the competition had mixed results. While it seems that many more people were interested in visiting my blog because of the competition, not many people actually entered. I hope I can learn from this and make my next competition more user-friendly. I enjoyed running the competition and I liked the idea of giving away a donation in the winner’s name, so I thinkl I’ll go with this idea again next time. I will just try and think of different ways for people to enter.

Now to the important part: the winner!

In equal second place, with a big thank you and an honourable mention:
The New Australian
Activist Mommy
Reality Dancing

And in first place:
Parenting the Adopted
Rebecca, would you please contact me with a mailing address. I have purchased the goat in your name for a family in Myanmar, and I would like to send you the gift card with photo as soon as possible!

Thankyou to everyone who has supported my competion and my blog in general.

This idea came about because I would really love to see more children sponsored in schools, but problems arise during school holidays or at the end of the year, when the sponsorship would either be dropped or the teacher would take it up personally. This idea is a short-term version of child sponsorship. The money still goes to the same community, but it is a short-term commitment and the schools will see actual proof of where their money has gone.

Even though it would take several months for the fundraising project to be completed from start to finish, there is a chance that the school was be so motivated after seeing the photos of how they helped that they would be inspired to have another fundraiser for the second semester. I’m more than willing to help with the fundraising, and to meet with the students and discuss fundraising ideas. I think I owe it to World Vision to do the best job I can after returning from the study tour. And I also think that I owe the World Vision staff and the people of Mozambique a great deal after having been treated with such hospitality and friendliness.

My second and main idea is a fundraising challenge for all of the schools. I would ask each school to come up with a fundraising idea to raise money for a project in the Cahora Bassa ADP. It would work the same way as a sponsor sending a Gift Notification for their sponsored child. The school would raise the money, and decide for themselves what area they would like their gift to go towards. I would provide ideas of course, from the experiences that I have had in Mozambique, and could advise them on some areas where the money is most needed. For instance, the school may decide they want to raise money for school materials, or for shoes for kids, or for water access, or to help kids get to school, or for medical supplies for a hospital, or whatever else they come up with. They may even choose to provide some livestock for a family, that the ADP Managers could then choose.

The area would be pretty wide, so that when the ADP receive the money they can have a wide discretion as to what the money should be used for, since they obviously know better than us what is needed. I would collect the money and send it to the ADP with a letter saying in which area the school would like the money to be spent, in exactly the same way as a sponsor sends money to their child’s family and community. Then the ADP would spend the money where they think fit, and would take photos and send them back to me, and I would then present them back to the school. I think that this kind of fundraising is great because the students will be able to see exactly where the money has gone, not just towards a particular cause. They can think ‘we raised this much money and it bought this borehole well’, or ‘these three cows’, or whatever. I would also set up a website with all the details and so that the students or teachers can contact me. There will be an achievements page, where all the schools will be listed along with their fundraising ideas, how much they raised, and eventually what their fundraising money was used for, along with the scanned photos of what the money has bought.

I’ve been back for two days now, and things are pretty much back to normal, except that I don’t feel normal at all. Dancing starts again this week, today in fact, but I’m not going to go (which is very unlike me) because I just don’t think I can go back to doing ‘normal’ things yet. Its like everything I do now has to be about ‘me going to Africa’, otherwise I’ll forget and it will all be over too soon. I’ve got a huge list here of people I want to write to and things I want to do before I lose the passion of what I’ve experienced. I’ve been thinking a lot about what projects to do now that I’m back – it’s like when I go to schools I’ve got this huge opportunity to reach so many people, and I want to make sure that I get the right message out there.

Firstly, I will be promoting the 40 Hour Famine. But since that’s not till August, I will be promoting some other ways that people can get involved now. I’d like two promote two things – one that involves fundraising, and one that doesn’t involve money. For the latter, I’m still really excited about the pen pal program with the Maputo High School. I’d need to get in touch with the school and see if they had students that were interested, and they would have to be students that were learning English so that the letters would not need to be translated. And I would also need the Australian people to send a reply-paid envelope with every letter, so that the Mozambican students would not have to pay for postage. That could be the most difficult part. I went to Australia Post and asked if there is any way we can buy stamps or prepaid envelopes here that can be used to send mail from Mozambique to Australia, and basically the answer was no. So I guess we would need someone in Mozambique to get the stamps for us, or we could send a small amount of money to the students to pay for postage, but that raises the problems of currency, and the issue of sending money through the mail. I would really love for this idea to work but I need some advice on how it could be run.

We got back in the van for our final drive around Maputo before heading to the airport. At the airport, we checked our luggage in and paid the airport tax, and then went to the international lounge and waited for our flight. There were a few shops there, and so we had our final chance to do some shopping in Mozambique.

The service ended shortly after, and we all went to the Maputo World Vision office for a short meeting. We met with Ventura again, and some more of the World Vision staff. We discussed our experiences in Tete and they asked us for our opinions on the development work that is being carried out. Near the end of the meeting, Ventura asked those of us who are child sponsors why we starting sponsoring in the first place. Serena asked me to answer since I’ve been a sponsor for the longest, and so I explained about always having wanted to sponsor a child, but deciding to wait until I was financially able to continue the commitment, and then watching the documentary about the little boy in Kenya and what his life was like. I spoke for a few minutes, and kept looking over at Ventura to see what he was thinking, but his expression gave me no indication. A few more questions were asked, and then the meeting was wrapped up as we had to move off to the airport. As we stood up to leave, Ventura came over to me and thanked me for my story, and said that it was very moving. That really meant a lot to me considering he is so high up in World Vision Mozambique.