Volunteering experiences in Tanzania with TYCEN
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May 12, 2012
My name is Winfrida Abel,A past volunteer from TYCEN project 2011 from Belgium.
At the very outset I must say a huge Thank you to TYCEN for allowing me to have these wonderful experiences in Tanzania through volunteer project. It is real difficult to put in writing everything I experienced while volunteering with TYCEN.
Anyway, I would like to share my volunteer experiences with TYCEN in a beautiful country known as Tanzania, I joined the project in August 2011, the program had a total of 15 participants both Local and International volunteers. As Participants we were involved in a community project surrounding the construction of classrooms for a local school in Mwanga-Kilimanjaro organized and hosted by TYCEN TANZANIA and the Local Government. This project was designed to help support a larger number of children enrolled in school and was supposed to reduce a concentration of many children in very small classrooms (as of that time there were more than 60 students in a single room).
The main goal of the project therefore was to ensure the development of a knowledgeable, self reliant, skilled, disciplined, and a healthy population with the capacity to drive and sustain the socio-economic development of the nation through the construction of classrooms and support of school materials like chalks, text books etc.
The Project Theme: Supporting rural and marginalized children in their right to access quality education in a conducive learning atmosphere.
The work camp atmosphere was really marvelous, like something I had never felt. Even though we had completely different cultures and languages, we could talk to each in English, eat the same food and sleep in the same room. It was a wonderful experience for me. There were various kinds of activities each day for instance discussing the World’s future, various excursions were organized like eco-tours, Hiking to the view point on the pare mountain, cheap safari to Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater awesome sceneries of Tanzania.
In the morning we had the physical work under the sun but full of interaction with locals and fellow participants. At night, we enjoyed Tanzanian local dishes, drinking and eating sweets, talking about the life in our own countries. I had some very interesting times.
The most unforgettable activity was a chance to listen to and see traditional songs and dances of each country in the event International Cultural Night presentation whereby each country represented in the program had a chance to showcase various things to others and we had a chance to learn various games, sports and tasted various dishes and drinks from each country during the cultural night.
Most importantly, I could make true friends with people from different corners of the World. Even though it was a short period of two weeks we helped each other and had a very good relationship among volunteers and the locals that would never end. I thought deeply that religion, language and culture do not matter when making friends. And we are just people from the same planet, the Earth.
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Volunteer assistance is critical to enabling our international partners to create change in their communities. Many of them have shared the work they were able to accomplish with the help of international volunteers. Read their stories below. 
