Volunteering overseas

Written by: Elaine Smethurst

What did your voluntary work involve?
I worked in Tanzania for four months with Student Partnerships Worldwide (SPW) on an environmental development programme with two other volunteers, one from Britain and the other from Tanzania. I was trained for a month prior to starting the work on everything from organic farming techniques and stove building to non-formal education methods and Swahili.

We were then split into groups and sent out to villages, where our priority was to meet villagers and ascertain their main environmental concerns. Farming was top of the list in my village, so we worked with a local farming expert to introduce compost building, crop mixing and natural pesticides.

One of the best parts of the programme was working so closely with local people and we really learnt a lot from each other

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