Livingstone Community Projects Updates and Achievements from Q2 2018 - African Impact

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NYANJA LESSON: Mudye bwino ENGLISH TRANSLATION: Enjoy your meal!

WHATS NEW ON THE GROUND? •

We welcomed Cyrille from France as our new Teaching and Sports Coordinator

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We have started workshops on gender empowerment which has seen more than 1,000 students take part in menstruation talks

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Our medical volunteers spent two full days in the village of Natebe, providing home-based care in rural patients’ homes, taking a lot of vitals and cleaning some interesting wounds

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We completed two HIV Education workshops over the past few weeks.

The students from the Tourism College improved their knowledge by 13%

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At ST. Raphael’s School, we taught 130 young students about the stages of HIV, and about how HIV is transmitted. Their improvement of 25.3% showed the lessons were a great success

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Our Health Club in the village of Mwandi focuses on running interactive lessons to the grade 5 and 6 students. Volunteers have created lessons on the human body, the effects of drugs on our body, HIV, nutrition and waste management, and helped students plant their own tomato plants!

• We completed two female’s health talks with 40 Grade 8 students at a local school and about 25 Grade 8 students at another about cervical cancer, breast cancer, healthy food, healthy reproductive organs and pregnancy. They improved their scores by 80% and 84%, respectively. Great job girls!

• The farm is looking great as together - with the Grade 4 girls - we have been planting lots of vegetables. Everybody is working really hard to water the plants, get rid of all the weeds and make sure there’s no plastic on the farm. Soon we hope to harvest the tomatoes, onions, Chinese cabbage and sugarloaf • We’ve recently started the Girl Impact program with 2 new girls groups and one new boys group. The students already covered lessons about teamwork, gender roles, communication and self-esteem. This is a great start and we can’t wait to do more lessons with these classes • As part of the leadership program, our Grade 6 girls finished the 4-week HIV course, which covered a lot of different topics like: what is HIV, how can HIV be transmitted and how can you treat HIV. The girls made an incredible improvement of 18% between their pre and post-test.

• Apart from giving 5 village tours, the women from our women’s group have been learning about sports and nutrition. Now all the women know how to make the most delicious peanut butter and they created their own “energy balls” with peanuts, oats, sultanas and some coconut

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The volunteers worked on creating a water pump so they can water the garden and the trees they just planted At Mulwani village, we helped a partner school to build a new classroom block. We mostly focussed on plastering the walls This past quarter we finished 2 ecobrick workshops, one during the holiday club at Linda Farm (with around 90 students) and one with the Grade 4s at DCC. Now all the kids know how to make a strong, environmentally-friendly ecobrick from recycled plastic. This is a great way to clean up the environment and is useful for our building projects At DCC, a local school, the volunteers recently finished an outside classroom that we’re going to use for our Girl Impact classes. At the moment they’re working on the finishing touches; building a wall that separates the nursery from the outside room

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PE lessons have officially become part of the school curriculum and not just a break-time activity. This provides our volunteers with time to create structured lessons for the students We run monthly modules focused on one sport in all four schools we teach in. So far children have learned netball, rugby, and football The biggest change revolves around how the lessons are run. We plan our hour-long classes with sport specific warm-ups and drills intended to improve the skills needed to play the sports we teach The children’s ability to execute and learn new drills has improved substantially. What we are most proud of is the behavioral changes. Our students are more engaged, enthusiastic, and lessons have become much easier to run The children have a better time, and improve their skills, which translates to increased self-esteem. We are incredibly exited to see that this new program is having a positive impact on the children and our volunteers who see the fruits of their efforts We are currently running a 5 week program with the Victoria Falls University.

Our volunteers are loving the sports sessions with the university students

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This quarter our volunteers have been teaching in four different schools: Mwandi, Zambezi Sawmills, DCC, and Mulwani. They have had the privilege to teach grades 5 through 7 on a wide range of subjects

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Volunteers have taught English, IT, social studies, science & health, and math. Having more teaching assistants in a classroom provides more individual attention for students. More students get a chance to understand the material and are also presented with innovative lessons from our creative volunteers

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Our Adult Literacy Club has also been overhauled. We are now teaching our adults using the school curriculums, aiming to have our students graduate in their grade 7 English

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The volunteers love spending their time with our adults who are so eager to learn. One of our former students is now helping us teach, which is both fantastic and inspiring! We also give weekly “Wordily Wise” lists to improve their vocabulary

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Our Math clubs in Mwandi and Linda are focusing on the basics. We have been putting the incentive on multiplication tables, adding, subtracting, and long divisions. It is fantastic to have so many volunteers in the classroom. It gives us a chance for 3 students to work with one volunteer and get the 1-on-1 time they need. The children and volunteers love it. It’s a win-win

“I was on the girl empowerment project for 6 gorgeous weeks and I could do it for the rest of my life. The girls, the boys, the women, the community, they were the most incredible, kind hearted, intelligent and generous people I’ve ever met. Everybody was so welcoming and willing to learn. The projects, the beautiful nature, the community of Livingstone, the backpackers and the group of friends made my experience life altering. Not only did I get to be a part of the Zambian culture, I also feel empowered myself. If you’re thinking of giving back and sharing your gifts, do it. I’ll be back in Livingstone for sure!”

“If you still have doubts about doing the microlight or not, stop double thinking and sign up right away. Flying over the falls feeling the breeze on your face and admiring the power and majesty of nature will leave you speechless: the view that you will enjoy from up there is simply amazing.

And, when flying over the Zambezi, you will spot some elephant, some hippo and some crocodile. Here in Livingstone I learned that memories don’t come along to you, you need to make them: don’t let this opportunity for creating an unforgettable memory take flight without you on-board.”