Art Day (Thursday 16th September 2010)

Today the whole school participated in a day of art organised by Ashy and Dani. We began the day with the normal routine, which meant distributing e-pap as the children arrived and also singing a few songs together during circle time.

Dani and Ashy organised use all into three groups; 3-4 year olds inside the pre-school in one room, 4-5s into another classroom and the 5-6s in a separate classroom outside.

Katherine, Emily and Jantine were with the 4-5 year olds. We started with leaf rubbings. Some of them found it very hard but one little girl managed really well...she's definitely an artist in the making!

The next activity was finger painting, which was of course rather messy....although not as bad as it could have been! The children enjoyed using their thumbs, and other fingers, to make flowers. Some of the volunteers also enjoyed doing this!

After a quick run around outside in the sun, we moved onto the next activity. The children coloured in little paper cut-outs of themselves, which were then placed onto a sketch of the school. The finished product looks amazing, it's bright and colourful and really represents the spirit of the school. Everyone was really pleased with the final piece of art and is now proudly displayed inside the school.

A huge thank you to Ashy and Dani for organising such a fun and successful day!

This blog was written by Katherine King (Thank you also!)

New Bikes and Uniform for all African Impact Staff!

The African Impact Staff! (L-R Deolinda, Eddie, Joao, Cecilia, Lourenco, Zelia, Maria, Samuel)

Last Friday each member of the African Impact Staff received a new bike (brilliantly put together by Joao) and a very smart African Impact uniform. Each member of staff works so hard towards making this project the success that it is, so a HUGE thank you to them all!

Joao's mastered it! Eddie gives Samuel a helping hand

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