UFV publicity

I just submitted this to my university publicity and media department as per their request. thought i would share it on here...(seeing that i did ALLLL that typing already)
"Growing up in the small town of Summerland, BC formed the importance I now have of relationships, accountability and community support. I lived in the same house my entire life with my parents and 2 brothers (one older, one younger) until I graduated from Summerland Secondary School in 2003.Unknowing of what I wanted to pursue other than travelling, I spent a good four years off and on working from home as a lifeguard, waitress and ballet instructor ---and living/working/studying in New Zealand and Australia until spring 2007.
I first came to Uganda as a volunteer with Canadian NGO GIVE International in April 2007. I came as an optimistic, wide-eyed 21 year old who thought she knew a bit about travelling and ‘Africa’. My experience was life changing; not in a sappy, “I’ve Made A Difference” sort of way, but in a way that actually changed the direction of my life and formed my desires for a career in the future. Reflected in the fact that I re-directed my former strictly Theatre study path to the Sociology/Anthropology degree at UFV (still with an extended minor in Theatre).
When I was offered the position this summer of “Volunteer Coordinator” for GIVE International (whom I volunteered with in 2007); my heart leapt at the opportunity to get my feet wet in my first PAID work in International Development. I arrived in balmy Uganda in June, and arrived back to the town/city of Jinja at the source of the River Nile (about 2 hours from the capital of Kampala); the same city I volunteered in in 2007. I stay in a Guesthouse run by Busoga Trust; a water development NGO from the UK. It’s always full of people from around the world who are working on different projects, which is an excellent setting to meet people and make connections.
Basically I am in charge of the ‘First Time To Africa’ Canadian volunteers who come over for various amounts of time as I did two years prior. My job is not to smother them with rules and regulations or babysit them; but to help orient them with Jinja, with Uganda, with the people and culture. I set up work/volunteer placements for whatever their field of interest is- GIVE has links in several different health clinics (we get a lot of nurse and doctor volunteers), schools, and orphanages. I arrange where they stay, help out with transport and direction for the first week-ish and kind of set them off on their way- always checking in on them to see how they are doing and if they need any help with projects or dealing with sticky-interesting-African situations. I am in charge of working with the GIVE finances here in Uganda, communicating daily with my boss in Ontario and working closely with our local Ugandan staff (of which we currently have 3 paid and another handful of volunteers who help out when needed). I constantly am in meetings with people- directors from our placements, potential new placements, possible link organizations and projects. The focus of GIVE is to support locally run projects that could use an extra set of hands, especially in Jinja’s surrounding villages.
All the while I’ve been doing this the past few months, I have also been working under the supervision of UFV Sociology instructor Stephen Piper (via email!) on a field study for Sociology credits on the concept and phenomena of “Volunteerism”; doing an analysis of different NGO’s I come across everyday here in Uganda. This will work in my favor for a concentration in Global Development Studies (to add on to my Sociology/Anthropology major), when the program gets off the ground at UFV.
While I’ve been here this second time around I’ve thought a lot of the future and what I plan to do, and why honestly I am here in the position I am in. To many people it may seem ‘noble’ or ‘worthy’ or ‘Good Samaritan’-like work that I’m doing; but to me it really is a career path that I actually, truly enjoy and love to do. If I really enjoyed and loved working with computers, then I would do that; but I don’t. I love working abroad. I love different cultures. I love the adventure, I love the people. I love the confusions and the frustrations that come with the cultural boundaries and differences I have to work through in order to do my job well. I like living under a mosquito net with the geckos, fishing the ants out of my honey and riding on the back of motorcycles through bumpy red dirt roads and mud hut villages that most people only see in World Vision ads on TV. I like believing that somehow, something positive is happening, and I like being a part of it."

cheers from "The Field"
xxx vicks.