The 10 Week Timetable

May 13, 2018

One of the things team leaders do at the beginning of cohorts is complete a team planning tool to outline the targets over the 10 weeks. The volunteers then use this to create a 10-week timetable allowing them to effectively manage their time while they are here. We are the 4th cohort (3 previous and a pilot cohort) to work with PAGSUNG and are going to be the last. The pilot cohort is the most difficult because you don’t have any contacts or previous data to work from which is what the REACT group are now (they are doing a great job though). Our project is split into the following areas:

Needs assessments – volunteers design and deliver needs assessments with local schools, within our PAGSUNG centre and out in the communities to ensure the sessions they deliver are relevant to the people we work with. Any areas that are too ambitious for us, we compile in a report to be sent to local NGOs or International Service themselves.
Raising Awareness sessions – we plan and deliver raising awareness sessions in schools and communities based on international days or from the data in the needs assessments e.g. educating on sanitation including dangers of open defecation and ways to minimize health impacts. These are most often delivered using non-formal education techniques to make them fun and engaging. Some of the best days here are the RA sessions.
Peer Education – we select PAGSUNG women from our 3 communities to come to our Sagnarigu office and train them on areas like making quality shea butter or alternative ways of generating income as these will assist in their livelihoods. Empowering the women to be the educators makes the project more sustainable as they can continue to educate their communities once we have left.
Training – training the Sagnarigu women on topics relevant to their health and livelihoods based on data from the needs assessment. It is useful that our office is in the same place they work as we can put on sessions without it deducting from our budget. We get a sum of money for project expenses based on the number of UKVs and team leaders have the responsibility of effectively budgeting the money and continuously reconciling all the payments (a financial challenge I wasn’t expecting).
Resource development – this is anything we make that can be used as a resource e.g. designing and creating a shop for PAGSUNG products, creating a catalogue, leaflets from events etc.
Community Networks – establishing and strengthening links between PAGSUNG and businesses in their local community e.g. visiting the Sagnarigu chief to promote their work or encouraging local shops to sell PAGSUNG products.

Last week we did a peer education session, training and visited local schools to do a needs assessment. Next week we have our first raising awareness session in the communities focusing on International Day of the Families (15/05). We are making great progress and I can’t wait to see what this team will achieve by our mid-point, the week after next.

The 10 week timetable

Unexpected radio session, we were told to come in to "chat" about getting airtime, not realizing that the chat was on air. Good thing I can improvise!