Places of Assignment in Tanzania
Upendo Daima
Upendo Daima means “unconditional love” in Swahili and is an organization for street children in Mwanza that was founded in 1995.
The organisation provides the children with food, clothes, education and health care. The major goal (of the work) is to re-integrate the children into their families.
Upendo works partly on the streets, provides psychological and medical consultation, makes house calls, provides the children with food and enables them to attend school. If a re-integration into the family is not possible, the children get the opportunity to live in the “Malimbe Family”. The focus lies here primarily on extracurricular education and upbringing of the children.
The tasks of a volunteer include among other things: street work, to organize leisure activities for the children, to hold lessons for the children living in the streets, counseling for the children and their families plus to accompany the re-integration process of the children into their families.
Lake Victoria Disability Centre
The Center exists since 2002 and is located in Musoma in the eastern region of Lake Victoria. It offers professional training for adolescents with disabilities. In the small workshop of the Center, approximately 20 adolescents are trained in carpentry, metalwork and embroidery. The products of the workshops, like wheelchairs, furniture, and textiles are sold locally, including the schools. In addition to that, courses in sign language for the adolescents and their families are offered.
A volunteer works, according to his/her education, with juveniles and their families, teaches them in sign language or supports the teenagers in becoming) constructive and creative in their workshop work.
TUNAWEZA
TUNAWEZA is Swahili and means literally translated: “We can”. The organization was founded in September 2009. It offers young people with learning difficulties or mental disabilities the opportunity to improve their social and practical life skills and to acquire professional skills. Therefore different projects are to be gradually realized in a workshop (and the products ought to be sold). The offerings of the TUNAWEZA workshop include ecological gardening and Preservation of the landscape, domestic economy and cooking, a batik workshop, sewing room and a recycling art studio.
The TUNAWEZA workshop should not only be a place for education and production, but also where teenagers are able to socialize and feel that they are valuable to the community, where they receive on one side counseling and accompaniment for their life outside the workshop and on the other side information about their rights.
A volunteer supports the young people within the workshop-setting, helps to gain skills so that the students are able to live independently and undertakes (depending on his/her qualification) counseling.
Places of Assignment in Ghana
EMC-Ghana Projekt
The Education of the Mentally Challenged Project was originated in 1995. It was created to support the setup of the first special education school in Ghana, the Garden City Special School (GCSS) in Kumasi, where people who love with mental disabilities have been taught since 1977. The aim is to include the children and adolescents with mental disability into society.
By now EMC has five partner schools for children and adolescents with mental or physical disabilities throughout Ghana. Those are boarding or day schools that are attended by students of the local area. In addition to the regular classes, some of the partner schools offer a range of inclusive courses and workshops, which should help to improve the social skills and motor functions.
The intercultural exchange is maintained by the active support of the volunteers. They assist in class, organize their own projects (for example a small school farm), if necessary assist by support of individuals, they have the opportunity to use their own knowledge of ergotherapy and physiotherapy plus they get the chance to initiate their own workshop, which can have an educational or creative approach.
Starting in the summer of 2009, Marlene supported a school for the deaf in Swedru for the duration of 8 months. Marlene herself is deaf and she made a video about her experiences from Ghana. For those who do not know sign language, here an explanation of her gestures.
Hand in Hand / Ananse
The Hand in Hand Community was founded as a non-governmental organization in 1992 and has the aim to offer a home to mental and multiple handicapped children. According to the abilities of the children, they receive a professional training or school education. The community in Nkoranza consists of a residential village, a workshop for people with disabilities, and the Shalom Special School. The project autonomously makes profit through several guest-houses and a small restaurant, a kiosk, the selling of the handmade products from the workshop and an internet café in the center of Nkoranza.
At the moment, about 45 orphans with mental disabilities live with their foster parents in the village. Every day, other adolescents from the surrounding villages come to work at the workshops.
Volunteers as well as professionals in special education and therapy assist within the community. They support the work of the Shalool Special School, instruct teenagers within the workshop or assist the children in practical tasks.
Places of Assignment in Cameroun
Mosoh Cameroun
Mosoh is a self-help organization that was founded by a group of people with disabilities in Nkongsamba in 2005. Mosoh Cameroun has the aim to help with the integration of people with disabilities into Cameroon´s society, to make their rights public, and to find solutions for the improvement of their daily lives (Exclusion, bad living conditions, little access to school education and professional training or jobs, insufficient medical care, insufficiently adjusted aids etc.).
The attempt is to include people who live with disabilities in economically, socially and cultural processes and to support them in their wish to a self-determined life.
Since the foundation was founded, more students with disabilities are registered in schools, a training center for people with disabilities was built, and the House of the Handicap was opened as an information and consultation center. Physiotherapy and surgery plus the supply of aid care were realized.
Volunteers work, according to their qualifications and the current needs, in the training center of Mosoh or support the organization in their educational work.
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Places of Assignment in South Africa
Ithemba
Ithemba is a Day Care Center in a township of Port Elizabeth which is attended by children and young people with intellectual and learning impairments. The aim on one side is to achieve a broad special education care and on the other side to facilitate life skill training.
The tasks of volunteers include primarily the supervision of children, preparation and follow-up of the work with the children and adolescents, the support of individuals and the realization of group work and class projects. Due to safety issues there will be always send two volunteers to Ithemba (for at least 12 months).
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