News from June 2010

With SKIP Glasgow, Edinburgh and Cardiff already out on project and many other branches preparing to depart over the next few days, excitement is building amongst SKIP volunteers and committees regarding the prospects for the coming summer.
We got in touch with Emily Mayo, a volunteer for Southampton, preparing to go out with Group 1 to Madagascar. We also to spoke to Tim Smith, one of the project coordinators who has been organising the project and the volunteers along with Sarah Jackson and the rest of the SKIP Southampton committee. To find out how they responded, read on...

Tell us about yourself.
I am Emily Mayo a 1st Year Medic at Southampton Uni and I’m from Essex originally.

How did you get involved with SKIP?
Someone came to one of my lectures and did a shout out, talking about the project in Madagascar and it sounded really fun and worthwhile, as well as something to fill the long summer with, so I decided to get involved! I went along to an information evening, applied, and now I’m getting ready to go on the trip.

What are you going out to do in Madagascar?
Well, I’m going to be working as part of the village project, where we are helping to build a health centre, teaching children in weekday workshops about dental hygiene and how to prevent malaria, and reinforcing hygiene and nutrition taught in previous years. As a new thing this year we’re running Saturday workshops about proper breastfeeding that we’ve all been learning about through our training weekends.

How will this help the local community?
The knowledge we pass on will help to reduce rates of diarrhoea and increase general health of the population to help everyone there live longer and healthier lives. We learnt that a part of the SKIP ethos is to teach people to teach and to eventually not be needed so we will leave skills and knowledge to children and mothers at the workshops to pass around to others in their community.

What’s your role as group leader?
I have to be the first point of call for volunteers who have problems and am a link between events on project, the partner organisations and the Southampton committee back home.

Is there anything you’re worried about?
A couple of things! As I am one of the group leaders, I will have to keep harmony in the group and get everyone working together, but I hope this won’t be a problem as everyone in the group is really nice.

What are you most excited about?
I can’t wait to meet the local people, learn about their culture, stay with my host family and of course the teaching, I love being around children, so that will be a big highlight!

What are your expectations of your time there?
I think I’ll grow as a person, especially through learning about another culture and working in a team, all working towards the same cause. Most of all, having a great time and having a real positive impact on the community!

Thanks Emily, and best of luck to you!

Now to Tim Smith, the joint project coordinator who has been working tirelessly all year to put the project together, and will be pulling the strings in the background all summer.

When and how did you get involved with SKIP Southampton originally?
I first saw it at the medic’s bunfight and I was looking to do charity work at the end of my first year, and SKIP seemed to fit the bill, and I’ve been on the project twice since then, and been training coordinator.

What have the committee been up to this year getting volunteers ready and the project ready?
We recruited volunteers early on with aim of giving people plenty of notice of training weekends and fundraisers so that we could get everyone involved. We have taught our volunteers all about SKIP and how we work, Madagascar and the charities that we work with, what’s been achieved so far and what we have planned for this summer and beyond!

The more practical things we’ve taught are teaching methods, cultural sensitivity issues specific to Madagascar, health and safety and child protection to ensure everything we do this summer is both safe and effective. Of course we’ve also played a lot of fun games to get all the groups to know each other better and most importantly not being embarrassed looking silly in front of each other, which is very important if you’re going to keep children interested during the teaching sessions!

After a thorough handover, we’ve been in regular contact with the charities we work with to prepare everything on the ground. We have been checking the general situation around Antananarivo (Madagascar’s capital) and the political situation for the entire country.

We’ve put a lot of work in adding interventions to our project schedule, with Sarah Yamamoto doing a lot research into oral health, malaria prevention, oral rehydration therapy and breast feeding, topics that have been added based on feedback and requests from the Malagasy people we have taught and collaborated with in the past.

What are you hoping for the project to achieve over the summer?
First and foremost establish our presence back out there after a one year absence due to the political problems in Madagascar. Delivering the new oral health messages whilst reinforcing the older, but still important hygiene and nutrition messages. We will be collecting more feedback this year to see how well our teaching is working, along with carrying out some observational research providing baseline data on hand washing in the community in the Old Town.

I really hope our new community workshops are a success and the community feels they got what they wanted from the volunteers’ presence. For the volunteers I hope they will learn about the developing world and feel empowered to get involved further in the SKIP project and later in life.

What words do you have for any SKIP volunteers getting ready to go on project, or anyone going out to the developing world for that matter?
Learn as much as you can about the place that you are going to and what you will be doing before you go, as you won’t have to ask too many stupid questions and you can hit the ground running in achieving your aims.

Basically this should stop you standing in front of a class of children on the first day trying to work out how you are actually supposed to wash your hands, let alone being able to teach them!

Certainly a summer full of potential, for volunteers, partner organisations and most importantly, the communities that all of this hard work is trying to benefit.

If you would like to get involved with SKIP, as a volunteer at your university or through our external volunteer scheme, or even as a professional advisor please have a look around our website for the relevant contact details or email info@skipkids.org.uk To donate towards our continuing work around the world, please press the red donate button in the top right corner of the page.