Completed Building Project...New toilets at Pre-school!

The volunteers and our very hard-working translator Eddie have completed a new set of toilets for pre-school. It took two weeks and alot of hard manual work but everyone got stuck in and the rewards are well worth it.....thank you everyone :)

*New Project* English Club

We have just started an exciting new project....English Club. Currently we have twelve students who all work at our volunteer accomodation, Aguia Negra, and they attend lessons on a Saturday morning from 9-10 a.m. The lessons are planned and led by the volunteers and focus on speaking and listening skills, which will aid them in their jobs.

We are hoping the project will prove to be as successful as our others and will grow to include more members of the local community.

Mozambique Victory Art Day

On Thursday 2nd September we held an art day at pre-school to celebrate Mozambique Victory Day. Victory Day, the 7th September, celebrates the date Mozambique initially gained independence from Portugal in 1974.

In their classes the children loved decorating and making brightly coloured flowers from pipe cleaners and tissue paper. They then all joined together for a colourful procession in the plyground. They enjoyed waving their flowers in the air and singing 'Bandeira Africana, Bandeira Mocambicana', meaning 'Flag of Africa, Flag of Mozambique'.

The volunteers later helped to make the flowers into two wreaths and a lovely garland, which are now hanging brightly outside the pre-school.

Using the colours of the flag- green, red, yellow, black and white, all the children helped to paint a big 'MOCAMBIQUE' sign. Many messy hands later....it looks great hanging in Zelia's classroom.

It was a really fun morning with big smiles, loud singing voices and multi-coloured decorations in celebration of a special Mozambican national holiday.

Written by Laura Barton and Katie Hood- thank you girls for planning a fabulous morning!

HIV/AIDS Awareness Project

African Impact has just completed 4 more successful weeks of our HIV/AIDS Awareness Project. We had three sessions at the Escola Secundaria de Vilanculos, teaching a class of 18+ year olds, and two sessions at Alta Macassa working with a group of HIV positive women.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time at the secondary school, and found the students to be enthusiastic, hard-working and knowledgeable. We taught the students about prevention and treatment, along with the biology and history of the virus. Although the students were already quite well informed, we found it necessary to clear up some of the common myths surrounding HIV and AIDS. The students were very engaging and asked many questions, which was fantastic and created a lot of discussion amongst the class.

In one of our sessions we performed a short play about HIV, in which our main character Pedro was persuaded by his friend not to buy condoms as “it’s better without!” Pedro then goes on to have unprotected sex with Nilza, a girl he met in a local nightclub. After the performance the students were asked what they thought of the play, and what they thought about how the characters acted. We then invited the students to change the play so it had a more positive ending, and asked the students to enter the roles of the characters. This worked really well, and the students thoroughly enjoyed themselves. In the second part of the session we asked the students to create their own piece of drama about various HIV/AIDS topics. The students came up with some great performances and really explored the issues surrounding the virus.

Our two sessions at Alta Macassa were very different from those at the secondary school; the group was a lot smaller and our sessions were much more casual. We began both sessions with a quick game of Uno to help make everyone feel more comfortable. The women took to the game quickly and everyone really enjoyed themselves. Since it was already known that the women were HIV positive, we decided to focus specifically on the transmission of the virus and treatment.

In our second session we asked the women to create a piece of artwork that expressed how they felt about HIV/AIDS. This was very special because they had never done anything like it; most of them had never even held a pen. It took them a while to take hold of the idea, but once they started working they got very involved. The artwork covered a wide range of topics, some focused on the need for a healthy diet while others illustrated the need for support from loved ones. Overall, the two sessions went very well and the women were eager to learn more.

Throughout the past four weeks, we have been lucky enough to work with a lot of great people and have really enjoyed the project. We look forward to future updates on the progression of the HIV/AIDS Awareness Project.

Written by Catriona Currie and Katie Hood

African Impact Mozambique on YouTube!

We had the pleasure of having Yvette and Maurice from Activity International visit our projects last month. While here they kindly put together a video of Vilanculos, life as a Volunteer and the projects we are working on, check it out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbYPNB9ifUc

Road Safety Day

On Friday the 27th August, African Impact ran it's first ever road safety lesson at pre-school. The lesson was spilt into three different sections, focusing on areas that the volunteers had noticed there were concerns, including:

• Crossing the road,




• Where to walk,




• Not using the road as a playground!

For the 'Crossing the road' activity the children were taught five basic steps using flashcards and 'do as I do'. 1= Listen, 2= Look left, 3= Look right, 4= Look left and 5. Ok......now walk. The volunteers created a road using skipping ropes and the children had to pretend to cross the road using the five basic steps.

For the 'Where to walk' activity the volunteers drew a road scene on the blackboard with clear pavements. Using stick on cars, bikes, motorbikes and pedestrians, we asked the children to put them in the correct place.

For the 'Not using the road as a playground' activity, the volunteers created another road using skipping ropes and demonstrated how you should and should not behave on the roads and pavements. Including: sitting/ lying on the road, chasing each other, chasing vehicles and picking up fruit. We had made a car, which we used on the 'road' to model the correct behaviour. Using the same activity and several of our pupils, we showed the rest of the school our correct road safety behaviour. The children really enjoyed the demonstration and were beeping constantly! Also in the second session we sang our fantastic song, which was a 'mash up' of 'The Wheels and the Bus' and several other songs the children know well. It was such fun!

Overall it was a hugely successful morning and the teaching points were re-enforced in real life by four volunteers who walked home with most of the class...and not one of them chased the truck!!!

The blog was written by Danielle Bailey, who also suggested the lesson needed to be taught and planned it along with Laura Barton. It was a well planned lesson and will be repeated every two months in the future to keep up the safe road behaviour. Thank you Danielle and Laura!

Water Awareness Day....What A Success!

What an amazing day......on Friday 20th August we held a Water Awareness Day at Pre-school. Around seventy members from the local community came along to learn about water hygiene and health. This fantastic attendence was due to the volunteer's hard work planning and making leaflets, which were handed out the day before during a 'walkabout' around Mahake. The volunteers worked in four groups to plan and make resources for an informative and fun stand, each on a different aspect of water awareness. They kept it visual and fun, with lots of demonstations and also free samples of soap. Everybody had such a fanatastic morning and at the end a lady thanked the volunteers for putting on the event for the community. She explained that although they already knew they should wash their hands properly with soap, many people do not and that it was interesting to find out about the diseases and how to prevent them. She also expressed her general appreciation for our Water Awareness Day. Below are the volunteer's summaries of their information stands.

• Handwashing (written by Danielle Bailey, Heledd Owain and Nina Baur):

The aim of our stall was to educate the community on when and why they should wash their hands and the consequences of not using soap. On our stand the group were shown a series of prompt cards with different activities on e.g. administering first aid or going to the toilet. They were then asked to decide whether they should wash their hands, before, after or both. We had a bowl of soap and water and asked them to wash their hands if they thought the answer was yes, but they were a little shy. Once the prompt cards were completed we explained the diseases that they could catch if they didn't use soap, which caused a few surprised faces. At the end we gave out free soap, but the demand was so high we had to cut them into smaller pieces.

• Drink Water, Clean Water (written by Johanna Oblund, Megan Jones and Maroeska Van Oosten):

We wanted to inform about the importance of drinking water so we had one poster with 'Why' it's important and also 'How to know I'm drinking enough' facts. The second poster was about safe/clean water, informing about how to make sure the water is safe to drink. We divided this poster into three parts: water from the river, the pump and rainwater. The third poster explained why clean water is so important; informing about diseases and again emphasising checking the water source and what to do if they're unsure the water is safe. We also illustrated how much a person should drink each day by using the male and female puppets. Deolinda did a fantastic job translating for us and everybody seemed very interested in the information we provided.

• Storing Your Water (written by Katie Hood, Emilie Mesmans and Laura Barton):

We aimed to explain how to keep your water clean in a container and safe from contamination. The main message was 'Keep it clean and keep it covered'. We gave some examples of daily activities such as: farming, using the toilet and playing, and explained how you should always wash your hands with soap and water. We also showed a clean bucket with a lid, explaining how an open bucket risks the water getting dirty and contaminated, leading to illness. The visitors seemed very interested in the advice and the morning was very successful.

• Cleaning With Water And Soap (written by Catriona Currie, Kelly Bolhuis and Ilona Elferie):

Our Water Awareness Day stand was a great success. We used colourful posters, visual aids and props to explain the best ways to clean your body, teeth and house. We explained that you should always use clean water and soap, toothpaste or washing up liquid. The group were very attentive and engaged in discussions about whether you could use soap and washing up liquid interchangeably. The group seemed to appreciate the advice we gave.

The morning was a huge success and thank you very much to everyone involved!