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Below is some of the feedback submitted by previous volunteers at our projects in Africa.  If you have volunteered at one of our projects and would like to share your comments and experiences please click on the button to the right.

Jennifer Bateman, Feb-Apr 2010

“Overall my volunteering experience has been wonderful. I have to say that from the moment I got off the plane, I was made to feel at home. Both Dina and Ronel have been outstanding both professionally and personally, treating me more like family than a stranger.

At times I have felt like repetitive paper work took up most of my duties causing me to feel underused. Dina and Ronel both came into the hospital and spoke to the ones in charge and arranged for me to help in other additional areas such as the home for children with disabilities. I was now permitted to shadow any willing doctors on any rounds and ward work and to spend some time with the current physiotherapist of the hospital.

As a registered and qualified physiotherapist, I was elated to spend time with the in-house physiotherapist at the disabled children's home and help her with her abundant workload. I am also permitted to go with her on outreach programs weekly into the rural villages. To date, we have done hearing tests, checked up on past patients and fitted children with new support braces.

Upcoming, I have an outreach program planned with the hospital social worker, a potential outreach with the HIV clinic into rural clinics and ward rounds in the maternity unit. I am very excited about my remaining time and will make the best use of my time.

Dina and Ronel have made it possible me for to experience more areas than I ever thought possible, I really feel like my possibilities and options are endless."

Nathalie Maloret, May 2010

"Although only here for 2 weeks, I still feel like I managed to add value and make a contribution to the community here. Unfortunately due to the recent floods one of the orphanages, where I was due to volunteer at wasn’t accessible, so we looked at other areas where I could assist and decided that focusing on working with Social Welfare would be a good place to start and this was where I spent most of my time.

Social Welfare had planned two outreach programmes to some of the more rural areas where villages have been flooded and relocation camps have had to be established. It was an eye-opener to see how these people are having to survive and the conditions that they are living in. Part of the work that I did back in the office was to consolidate all of the reports about the outreach programmes and look at the consistent issues in all the camps and look at ways that these issues could be resolved or even improved. Having spoken with the Head of Social Welfare and also observed some of the issues the department faces, I also put together proposals on how Social Welfare and Gender can work better together including an outline for a workshop and an overview of how to put together a Service Level Agreement and Mission Statement for both departments to establish.

I also worked in the HIV Clinic, which was interesting as I have no medical background and was also working in the department on National HIV Testing Day which saw the department test twice as many people as usual in one day. My main duties in the HIV Clinic was to capture and record data of the HIV results and medication administered, which although was a job that needed doing, I didn’t feel that it was best use of me, but even so, I managed to complete three months  data!!

I spent a few afternoons with the Home for Disabled Children and was really impressed with the great work they are doing there. I spent time playing with the children and giving them individual one-to-on attention and helped with their writing and reading skills.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time here, however, a big challenge for me was getting used to the work ethic  here within the Government departments, as this is a world apart from the ‘corporate culture’ that I am used to and I am sure with a few minor changes, these departments could become far more efficient. The locals are lovely people who embrace volunteers help and input in a really positive way. Although I hadn’t planned to use so much of my usual day to day working practices on this project, it was great to draw upon my experience and put together ideas that could really help and develop initiatives here – the people here have the ideas, they are just not so sure how to pull together and make best use of the resources and overcome their challenges."