The UCU in Africa Program offers selected 2nd and 3rd year students of different backgrounds (HUM/SSC/SCI) an interdisciplinary summer program of combined and integrated field studies, courses and internships in East Africa. The general aims of the UCU in Africa Program are to offer students an intensive – on site – cross-cultural personal and interdisciplinary academic learning experience. The program constitutes the following content elements: preparatory workshops, pre-departure course assignments, a summer field studies program in East Africa (4 weeks), internships (min. 5 weeks) and a report/paper.
In 2008, 22 students participated in the UCU in Africa Program. The field studies program took place in Tanzania. Following these Field Studies, students went – usually in pairs - on internship at host organizations active in areas of their academic interests in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.
Below you can find three testimonials from participants:
Linda van der Horst '08 - Zambia
Michiel Blommestijn '08 and Sharon Koenen '08 - Tanzania
Fritz Streiff '09 - Ethiopia
#Internship with an agricultural microfinance project in Zambia
Linda van der Horst
Too Chicken in the Bush?
“Oh exciting, another UCU adventure!” is what I thought when I signed up for the UCU in Africa program together with the internship in Zambia. I expected it to be ‘just another’ adventure, as I had done in the past: coming to UCU, going on exchange, language course in spain etc. I thought it was one of those things that would be amazing, but still be one of the many. This turned out to be very different than I thought. The whole experience turned my expectations of life, including my ambitions, upside down in a positive sense. After my graduation I thought it would be an excellent moment to take some time out, and go somewhere completely different.
I had been to development countries, and I also had seen extreme poverty. Ofcourse you are moved by these scenarios, but a life changing impact is absent. The UCU in Africa experience is totally different than a touristic journey, or an exchange in which you mostly spend your time with university students. My Africa experience started with the 4-week field course, which I started two days after my graduation ceremony. With my mind focused at graduation and graduation parties, I soon had to pack and leave for Africa. Arriving in Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania, I suddenly realized the drastic change and the adventure awaiting me. Four intense weeks of observing and reflecting passed by fast. It was amazing and surreal at the same time: spending a week with the Maasai, actually living as the locals for several days and the fabulous nature made me quickly adopt the African way of living. After the field course we were on our own and had to go to our internship places. We ended in Arusha, Northern Tanzania, and I had to go to the capital of Zambia, Lusaka. A journey of 3 days by bus and hitch-hiking were ahead of me (due to lack of money for a plane ticket), and it was a complete adventure crossing the country over land. Zambia is scarcely populated, which was apparent when we crossed the border with Tanzania and drove for more than 5 hours without the sight of any human settlement!
My internship was with Farm Zambia, which is part of Development Services and Initiatives (DSI), who started a microcredit project on the countryside of Zambia providing Family Chicken Units(FCU). The farmers took out a loan to pay for the FCU, with Farm Zambia providing the FCU and negotiating the loan conditions with the bank, keeping the interest rate low through a rotating guarantee fund from the Rotary Club Netherlands. Our task was to observe the workings of the project in the field and make recommendations to the DSI manager, and directly initiate certain practical improvements in the field, such as improving the monitoring system. Working in the field, building contacts with the local population, and becoming part of the daily life of a small town in the countryside was a great social experience. From the touristy experience to the field course, and then going even deeper into the actual culture by becoming part of daily life was a true eye-opener. In addition, I had the feeling I was actually positively contributing to the development of the small town. I do not think that my Western background was of added value to the actual improvements to the program (even though my contributions as a university student – regardless of background – was added value), but I do think that my relationship with the farmers, and the fact that I was Western, did change their perception of Western culture and people. Their perception of the stereotype Western girl has changed in my opinion, because I was very open to their culture and language, but also I lived the same way they did, ate the same food, and I did not drove around in some touristy bus, but mingled with the locals. Moreover, this also holds true for me, because I mingled with them and lived the same way as the locals, my idea of Africa has also changed very much.
I definitely consider the field course and my internship as an amazing experience, and I certainly recommend other UCU students to embrace such an opportunity!
#Internship at Moshi Urban Horticulture Association (MUHA)
Michiel Blommestijn & Sharon Koenen
MUHA is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1994. It is located in Moshi, at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Northern Tanzania. Its main objective is to improve the nutritional status of the population of Moshi, to fight both malnutrition and anemia. MUHA does this in various ways: it gives education in the fields of nutrition and agriculture, starts exhibition centers, teaches on entrepeneurship and conducts growth monitoring on children and health check-ups in general. Furthermore, MUHA occassionally provides initial capital to families to enable them to start small businesses; it initiates deep bore hole drilling in water scarce areas; it has established a nursery school and is starting a school for adolescents who dropped-out or have graduated from secondary school and want to obtain a certificate in nutrition and agriculture.
Due to the flexibility of the organization, during our internship we partook in activities in extremely varying fields of work, including: working in hospitals, monitoring the growth of children, making home visits, attending educational meetings about nutrition and agriculture and visiting a rehabilitation center for the mentally ill. Furthermore, we attended meetings of MUHA’s subgroups: the Shelter for Abused Women and Children Tanzania (SAWOCT) and its primary school and two women’s business group, looking at opportunities to make their projects self-sustainable. However, during our internship, naturally, most help was spent in direct cooperation with the host organization itself, during which we assisted in (or initiated) several of MUHA’s projects: We researched the different possibilities for financial funding/investment, improved MUHA’s PR-system and changed some of MUHA’s marketing strategies. The biggest project, and most time-consuming, was the writing of a business plan for MUHA’s Kyomu project. This project is the construction of a school, which would be providing an affordable 1 year training program on agriculture and nutrition for students from a poor region in the rural area. In order to make this project self-sustainable and realizable, we wrote a lengthy businessplan, in which we included the exact expenses/income/revenue of the school, a 20 acre rice field, a chicken coop, a water kiosk and a water pump. This businessplan, once complete, was sent to charitable organizations and is currently being discussed. We worked in a great environment with incredibly friendly and inspiring people and were able to learn an unbelievable amount and, simultaneously, give back the their community.
Msaranga Women Group
#Internship at ZOA Refugee Care
Fritz Streiff
The NGO: ZOA Refugee Care
ZOA (Zuid Oost Azie) Refugee Care is a non-governmental organization with its headquarters based in the Netherlands. Since 1973, the organization has been working with refugees, displaced people and victims of natural disasters in Asia and Africa. ZOA’s objective is to provide support to refugees, internally displaced people, host communities and victims of disasters irrespective of race, religion or social background. Its project portfolio includes distribution of food and other emergency relief goods, medial care, trauma counselling, education, agricultural and food security issues, social forestry, activities in the field of water and sanitation, vocational training and income generating activities, of which the latter two are the focus areas of the internship..
The Refugee Programme was initiated at the request of both ARRA (Agency for Refugees and Returnee Affairs) and UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), inviting ZOA to support Sudanese refugees and host populations in and around four refugee camps in Bonga, Fugnido and Dimma in the Gambella Regional State and Sherkole camp in Benshangul-Gumuz Regional state, which is the camp where the internship is conducted. These camps have been hosting around 100,000 Sudanese refugees and a small minority of less than 1000 refugees from the Great Lakes Region (Burundi, DR Congo, Rwanda and Uganda) since 1992.
Since 1996, ZOA has been involved in vocational skill training and income generating activities in areas like bee-keeping, pottery, weaving and tailoring and this project was transformed to Capacity Building and Community Development Services (CAPCOM) as of 2003. As the main task of this internship, ZOA gives the researchers the task to analyse the Vocational Skill Training Program (VSTP) at Sherkole camp.
The Internship: ZOA’s Vocational Skill Training
ZOA’s Vocational Skill Training Programme is the focus area of the internship, apart from a general introduction into the work of an NGO working with refugees. The following paragraph will serve as a short introduction into this area of activity.
Having spent several years in refugee camps in exile, the Sudanese refugees will repatriate with a change in their way of life and economic perceptions. This challenge has to be met with preparations of an increased momentum. The vocational skills and the informal trainings on community empowerment and self awareness are meant to change their way of living in the Sudan. In the Sudan there will be a lack of infrastructure and basic services. The refugees have to cope with these changes and the skills and knowledge learned through ZOA activities can contribute to their self-reliance in Sudan. Hence, the programme aims at contributing to the planned continuation of a self-sustainable reintegration in the Sudan. At the same time, the VSTP is designed to provide skill trainings, which will serve the refugees as a chance to engage in income generation activities in the camp. In short, ZOA’s goal is to train refugees for self-reliance in the camp and for the future upon repatriation.
Having outlined the topic of this year’s internship, it must be pointed out that it is not a given fact that ZOA will assign the exact task to future interns again. Indeed it is very likely that a different task will be given, as this year’s internship research has presumingly found out enough about the Vocational Skills Training Program for now.
