It’s been less than a week in Zambia and it feels like we’ve been here a lot longer, we’ve settled in quite nicely. We live in a cottage that has two bedrooms and a bathroom and a small kitchen and me and the three other girls live in it. Nathan has his own room within the courtyard of the YMCA. The little cottage is going to be our home for the next four months.
Every day to get to the office, we have to leave the cottage at 7 am to bus to our office across the city @ WFC. It takes an hour to reach the office in the morning, and an hour after work to get back home. I don’t think it’s that bad of a journey to get to work considering other Zambians walk a lot longer to get water each and every day.
We start work at 8 am and take lunch from 1 to 2, and then work until 4:30. So far, we’ve been introduced to our colleagues and have been briefed on each department within the organization. We have a week of orientation and getting familiar with all of the projects that WFC facilitates within different regions of Zambia.
At some point during the internship, we will be going into the field and to different provinces and staying for three weeks at a time. There will be no electricity, and no running water. There will be no cell phone service. These are the rural areas that Women for Change facilitates workshops in different areas.
Women for Change does not offer a hand out approach to helping communities. There are plenty other organizations that offer short term solutions, they will ask the communities what they need, and they say “we need food” and they will supply food. “we need water” they will bring them water, these are only short term solutions. Women for Change does not bring solutions to problems. They ask the local people what they need and they come up with their own answers to what the communities need. Women for Change just facilitates the discussions.
This makes me extremely grateful to have been placed with Women For Change, I’ve always been a firm advocate believing that these immediate “fixes” that happen with First Nation Communities like leadership giving money to band members for groceries isn’t helping, its only putting a band aid on the bigger problem. We have a nation that can not attain their own food.
I am just so grateful for the Creator guiding me here to learn on how I can change the thinking of people in my own community to give the average First Nations persons a better quality of life.
Xoxo-Ash
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