Week 1

Our first week was very rewarding but challenging. The mornings were spent with the women's groups and the afternoon were spent delivering presentations/workshops in primary and secondary schools.

Our aim in the morning was to share sustainable business ideas with local business women. in order to enable them to make more profitable and long-lasting businesses.

 We were able to do this so effectively due to the fast rapport that was built between both us the ICS volunteers and the individuals in the women's groups.  Thus we were able to share a plethora of ideas from  making plantain crisps to using candle wax in polish. It was also great to see the women sharing ideas with one another to improve the sustainability of each other's businesses.

Following from the sessions we as the I CS volunteers came up with new and innovative ideas to go to the women in the women's groups.

We aim to produce practical models and representations of the ideas that we came up with in the session.  We are going to make a book with instructions on how to make all of the various Products.

Although the overall or session in the women's group went well we did find a number of issues to address. Some of which included the language barrier, which hindered the fluidness of the session, and the ICS volunteers didn't feel like they could participate fully because they weren't sure what was being said.

To address this issue we, as a group decided that  each ICV volunteer would sit next to an  ICS volunteer in order to translate what was being said throughout the sessions. So all volunteers could contribute to the session.


Following on from this in the afternoons we went to primary and secondary schools to teach them about important issues such as self awareness, sexual health, drugs and substance misuse and bullying.

Each of the sessions were planned to be one hour long  and the aim was to inform, educate and entertain the children so they were fully receptive to the information that was being given to them.
I thought it was really outstanding that we all delivered our presentations so confidently, taking into account the fact that none of us had had prior experience of public speaking. The issues were more evident at the start of the week because we were all new to the process, however I saw a drastic change and improvement to all of our deliveries by the end of the first week.

 Some of the issues in the first week were coming up with enough material to fill a one hour presentation. Another issue was keeping the students engaged and interactive throughout the session.

The  last issue was there was not enough translations between ICV  volunteer and ICS volunteer, so both could not work together as a cohesive unit. Which made the session stilted at times.

That said, by the end of the week these issues were less evident due to the volunteers becoming more comfortable and confident public speakers. The volunteer is felt much better after the first session due to the constructive criticism or advice that was given to improve their performance is to make the sessions more engaging for the students.

All in all it was a great week it allowed us to develop a range of transferable skill such as problem solving and team working.  Although there were issue we were all in agreement of constructive ways to overcome and  resolve them.