The following is excerpted from an e-mail the author sent to friends and supporters when she returned from volunteering in Tanzania with Youth Challenge International*. She was assigned to Morogoro, approximately 350 kilometers west of Dar es Salaam, with two other young women and two young men.

We adapted to life in Tanzania quite quickly: no indoor plumbing, dense crowds, stifling heat, rice and beans, fresh fruit, dirt roads, oh, and HUMONGOUS cockroaches. I suppose in a way we didn't really have a choice but to adapt quickly. As soon as we landed we were assigned to our specific placements, introduced to our host families and instructed in some basic Kiswahili. And off we went! Three days after landing we started our programs.

We attended weekly Kiswahili classes which were necessary since most people in Morogoro have very little understanding of English. It is taught in school but since most aren't able to attend school, having a good grasp of Kiswahili was extremely important for us especially with our host families

We worked in partnership with the Faraja Trust Fund which is a Tanzanian charity organization that is active in sexual health / reproduction work-shops and does a lot of work in the poorer areas of Morogoro. The organization is one of the most renowned in Tanzania and is headed by a Member of Parliament.

As a part of its commitment, Faraja supports a street-side school for troubled youth. They offer free schooling for kids who've had to drop out of the regular school system or for those who could never afford to go. It is a two-year accelerated curriculum with small class sizes (about 50 students per teacher!). The idea is that once the students graduate from the school they will be prepared to enter the secondary school system although, at that point, they have to pay for their own tuition, books and uniforms. We were very active at this school teaching everything from English to life skills.
I taught art and health.

Another volunteer and I spent a lot of time at a youth centre preparing and facilitating classes in English and debate/life skills. Mainly men between the ages of 18 and 25 came to these classes because they are the ones with more free time. Women of this age group are usually active at home and tend to have young families of their own. Towards the end of our time in Tanzania, however, we managed to recruit three female students to these classes which, up to this point, was unheard of at the centre.

The debate classes were lots of fun. We quickly found out how eager the youth were to hash out really controversial issues surrounding industrial development and sexism. You'll be happy to hear that by the end of our term there we managed to solve all the world's problems!

The youth centre also offered free HIV testing and counselling organized by the in-house nurse. Another program was the Ushujaa kwa Uhai (Courage for Life) bi-weekly talent nights every other Friday. These programs also served as a platform to offer HIV/AIDS and sexual health education. In addition, we started performing at assemblies at local secondary schools about similar issues.

Another Faraja initiative is St. Mary's Hospital, a subsidized hospital with one full-time doctor on staff. I worked in the lab under the direction of a lab technician who works every day, year round, from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Most of my time was spent preparing slides and testing people for HIV, malaria, typhoid and pregnancy.

We made a lot of friends and had a lot of fun along the way. At times it was challenging and heart-breaking but I left feeling encouraged and optimistic. One of the most invaluable lessons was witnessing first hand where aid money is distributed and how it is spent. We hear a lot about corrupt organizations mis-managing funds and how food and supplies somehow never end up in the communities that need them the most. I feel very fortunate to have been a part of a team that gets to spend and allocate funds to make sure that it ends up in the communities that are most in need. And you all should feel as though you were a part of that too.

There's still a lot of work to do but there are a lot of people working hard to make sure that opportunities are made avail-able to everyone and that Tanzanians have access to, at a minimum, the basics for survival and a quality of life of which many so far have been robbed.

Carla Morán, BAS, University of Guelph

*Youth Challenge International (YCI) is a Canadian non-profit, charity organization and a direct recipient of funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Since 1989, YCI has sent Canadian youth overseas to work alongside local non-governmental organizations on development projects (e.g., HIV/AIDS awareness, youth development, women's empowerment and community building). The purpose of these initiatives is to work towards strengthening existing local organizations and help relieve the host country of some of the challenges and struggles their citizens face daily. Moreover, by working at the local community level, the objective of the volunteer participants is to help to create effective and measurable changes that can be sustained by the local community once the project team leaves. For more information about YCI, visit its website at www.yci.org.