Projects

Just ended holidays have been hectic. So much to do and time running out too quickly. I could not even stand behind the blog, also because of the rationing of electricity, whose it’s available mostly at night.
Since I started to tell my experience, however, I have never written about why I came here: to work for a year as a volunteer in civil service. My NGO is working on four projects, two of childcare and two of development. In particular, my colleagues and I work with two orphanages here in Brazzaville, supporting children education with repeater teachers, providing them with regular visits by a nurse, and medications. Furthermore, we organize animations to offer children moments of leisure. In total, the children under our care are 34.
The second project of childcare is a project of long-distance support: practically, Italian families pay education or vocational training and livelihood of about 30 children in Brazzaville.
With regard to development projects, the first is a microcredit project born last year and therefore still in experimental stage. Because of some errors of approach, however, the project is having some problems, and therefore it needs to be rethought and restructured. The last project involves the development aid of a village of 500 people in the forest, Likouala, which requires two days of travel to be achieved from here. In the last years, in collaboration with other local NGOs, my NGO has helped to restructure the village school, which was in a state of neglect, moreover it has furnished teaching and training of two people who can now teach literacy to others. The future perspective is to finish this stage of literacy and help residents to start small businesses of production and / or business, in order to satisfy the basic needs of the population.
In these projects, I will take the responsibility and management of microcredit and Likouala; moreover I will also keep the books of our bureau. In addition, I will also give a hand in the activities organized in the orphanages.
It’s a month and a half since I arrived here, and probably the experience with children has been so far the most extraordinary one. The joy with which we have been welcomed when we visited them the first time and the joyful tumult which overwhelms us every time we come back, eyes, smiles, the continuous wish to be caught in arms once more, the cheerful chaos reigning when we propose to draw or to sing, and a storm of energy that shake our bodies and charge our mood: there is nothing more necessary, when we are in daily contact with tough life situations, when we listen to stories or participate as witnesses to the suffering of people that, despite everything, never lose their dignity, because that is priceless and can not be measured in coins.
This experience so far is exciting, and I am aware to arrive to tell only a small part. Words are not allmighty, some things you have to see, certain odors you have to smell, certain items and certain kinds of music you have to heard. I'm still trying to make as many people as possible part of what I live, because I’ve also come here to touch and to witness what happens in this part of the world.