Each afternoon varies and you may be doing one of the following activities:

Teaching English
Across 2 afternoons a week you can teach English to a group of about fifty students split into groups depending on ability, ranging in age from young to middle-aged adults. Your role as a volunteer will include:

• Planning fun, interactive, and challenging lessons for the students

• Conducting lessons with the help of a translator in a patient, dynamic, creative, inspirational and passionate manner

• Assigning and correction of homework assignments

• English and Portuguese lessons with the children with the assistance of visual aids and a translator

• Developmental playtime where the children get to learn new games and play with toys to which they wouldn't normally have access

• Teaching basic lessons about colours, numbers and letters

• Constructive sports games such as frisbee and football

• Giving the children the one on one care and attention that is so critical for their development

Rural Home Building

Cyclone Favio hit the Mozambican coast in February 2007 and devastated much of the local area. Through local contacts work has continued with rural home-building for those who do not have the means to build for themselves (monetarily or physically). We work in close conjunction with community leaders to assess the most critical housing needs and then act accordingly.

We are currently managing to build 1 home approximately every 2 months (dependent on volunteer numbers!). They are simple and rustic structures typical of construction in the Inhambane Province. The work is sometimes challenging but always rewarding and offers an amazing insight into rural Vilanculos as well as the chance to meet and form working relationships with members of the local community. Other building projects that we undertake include refurbishment at the preschool, such as new classrooms and amenities.

Language Club
Saturday mornings are spent running and supporting a language club, an informal learning group open to the community surrounding the volunteer camp. The students that attend include young children, young women, and adults, all of whom perhaps have missed out on other formal learning opportunities.
 

Other community projects include
Beach cleanup, farm maintenance, painting projects and also once a month there will be a cultural day at the project translators family home, a great way to learn about the Mozambique culture. A typical day in Mozambique could be:

• 7:00 Get up at, have breakfast and start to get ready to leave for the project

• 8:00 Leave for school

• 8.15 start your work at the Pre-school

• 12.00 lunch break, you are then picked up and taken to the volunteer camp where you will be given lunch

• 14.30 Start of your afternoon activities

• 17.00 End of your working day. You are then picked up and taken home

• 18.30 dinner at the volunteer camp