Final Week on Placement

This week will be very emotional and all, it is the final week on placement and we all going to be saying goodbye to our directors/managers, and other people we have worked with over the past weeks. At Korvoni Umed (Caravan of Hope), we have helped developed both hard materials and soft skills. We have helped the organisation raise awareness and inform customers on how they not only buying a products but contributing to a better future for the girls.  Oftobkhon and I have developed a new website for them so people can know about the organisation and their work. We ensured that they have a catalogue printed out as well as all the designed leaflets so they can distribute to potential customer at fairs and other places. Through our support the business side of the organisation have now gained new customers and the staff develop creativity skills on how to market their products and the importance of branding. We encouraged the director and managers of Korvoni Umed to carry on with their good work, because due to them many girls have been saved from prostitution, human trafficking, domestic violence, etc. these girls now have a better future and we hope we have been able to make the business sustainable.

Overall, in our team of 8 volunteers we worked with five businesses that are giving back to the community and supporting women. These small organisations have a positive mission and have the potential to grow and help in tackling the country’s problems such as unemployment, violence against women and poverty. The directors of the businesses we worked with have positive attitude and hope for the country, which is why they are committed to building their country and more the reason why we worked with them. For example, apart from my placement our team also worked with a young fashion designer who only just graduated University but started her own business and would like to promote designs made in Tajikistan. She wants people all over the world to know about her country through her collections, she has put together various fashion show single handed and 2 of our team members were able to work with her to develop a business plan due to her not having a business background and knowledge of the importance of it. Furthermore they successfully applied for a grant to get her started in some areas of her business and now she’s been able to recruit local women who are helping her make the clothes. These are things she had no idea about or how to go about it, she had the enthusiasm, she thought she was ready to start her business but she didn’t have all it takes to successfully run a business but with VSO Volunteer’s support we have been able to empower her and make her business sustainable for the long run.

Though we might not see much change now, or how we have helped Tajikistan in a big way but one thing our Country Director always say to us is to have faith. Having faith that the little contribution you make will go a long way, it might not be now and it might show in one years’ time but it will show and we will say I helped make that difference. I was in Tajikistan when the tourism is very low and I contributed to the promotion now everyone knows about Tajikistan. As a result the economy has increased due to my contribution or I was there when small businesses were failing and I contributed to the development of these businesses now people all over the world are trading with Tajikistan and the country is now known for traditional material, cotton, etc. He said have Faith, so this is what I am doing, I am holding on to my faith that I have changed something and helped the country in some ways.

Some of Korvoni Umed Ladies in Cooking/Baking class

Sewing Class with Oftobkhon and Korvoni Umed ladies

James 2:22 Can’t you see? His Faith and his actions worked together; his faith was made perfect through his actions.

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CAD 2 & 3 (Global Entrepreneurs Week)

Time passing by very fast, we are slowly rounding things at Korvoni Umed and our project in general. It’s interesting how 12weeks seems like a long time but it’s actually not, as time goes fast. This week was one of our busiest as we had two events going on. It was the Global entrepreneur’s week, and since our project involves working with businesses and supporting them in business development, we were asked by the National Association for Small and Medium Business of Tajikistan to give a little presentation to local  students(150 of them) and businesses on our project and what we are doing to promote entrepreneurship.

As mentioned in my previous post, we are required to conduct a community event as part of our program. For this reason we planned to have another Community Action Day during the entrepreneurs’ week so we can promote entrepreneurship and encourage young people. Aside from the requirement from the Business Association, we hosted another CAD in this week with the aim to tackle unemployment after University and also for employers to connect and network with potential employees.

We managed to secure a space at the American Corner in the National Library, to conduct our community career event. At this event we had 6 medium/large size organisations from international, national and NGO’s with 10 representatives overall from the Human Resources departments. They were all ready and happy to answer questions from students about employment and skills, qualifications required to work in their organisation. Some of the company’s reps gave short presentations with an overview of what they do and the type of employees they require. Things like this rarely happen and are not vastly promoted within Universities or Recruitment organisations in Tajikistan. Students are not supplied with information’s on employment after education, and this is one of the main reasons why many young people struggles to find job after studies. As a result the men move to Russia to settle for domestic jobs. The country’s economy is quite low and there are less job opportunities, which makes it difficult for young people to find stable jobs. Equally important and probably the most influential barrier is the lack of preparedness of young people for the job market, as they lack the necessary skills to apply for jobs such as writing a professional CV/Cover Letter and how they should react at Interviews. Our event enabled them to understand the necessary steps to take after studying.  We also had recent graduates still in need of a job, therefore they were enlightened on steps to take and were able to have one-to-one discussions with the reps. Companies who participated included Tcell, Sheraton Hotel, Oxfam GB, Admedia, etc. Overall, we were able to empower over 50 young graduates and undergrads.

The entrepreneur week was very successful and feedback from most of the participants proves the success. Two days after our community career event, we presented at the global entrepreneur’s conference as required by the Business association and three of us from VSO gave the presentation including myself. We each talked about our placements, other projects our team are working on and also shared a short clip of past projects and encouraged students to follow their business ideas if they have any. In addition, we shared the benefit of volunteering and working to improve the community.

This week was very interesting for me personally, as it involve something I love doing and enjoy studying (Business). Especially the conference which involves exhibition and various presentation from many national and international organisations. I learned few things on how not to give up on your idea, if one plan fails try another. Do not give up, because the next one might be the right one. We had the American Ambassador at the conference talking about how they are providing support to young entrepreneur’s. A young American businessman also attend this conference, he shared his story and tried motivating young people in Tajikistan about starting their business. He mentioned how starting his first business at age 19, though it failed but he did not give up and now he co-found a successful online business that is booming all over NYC.

Although I am not looking to start a Business anytime soon but I am willing to help small businesses develop all over the world and continually looking to tackle poverty through business development.

VSO ICSE TEAM at Global Entrepreneurs Week Tajikistan

Community Action Day

Mid Phase Review

Despite Tajikistan being one of the poorest country, it has the most beautiful view I have ever seen in my little lifetime. Tajikistan is approx 97% mountain, but each city in this lovely country still manage to have something that beautify them. We are six weeks into our project, so it was time for Mid Phase Review (To review our hardwork for the past six weeks). Though I am still unsure on how six weeks is gone already, it felt like only yesterday we dragging our suitcases across airports, now that I am adapting to this new lifestyle I don’t wanna leave yet. But the Mid Phase Review (MPR), however is a way for us to discuss all highs and lows of our placements and come to a middle point on how to effectively have a sustainable impact.

MPR is also a time to get away from our host community, and a break for the team to bond. Hence why we traveled to a little village (paradise) called Nurak. While out here, we examine all issues we facing in the team and on our projects and identify various improvement.

Yup the view is real

My project is going well so far and now wishing for more time so I can finish what I and my counterpart have started and hopefully do more for Caravan of Hope. But we do not have much time left with only four weeks to go on placement and two weeks to evaluate, we aim to do our best. We have contacted many NGO and International Organisations and raise awareness of the women’s products and services, with the hope to get new customers, it has not been all smooth but we got some positive response and few NGO promising to contact Caravan of Hope if they have conference and need baking goods. We are still working on a new website, and continually improving there product quality, designs and catalogue. We aim to have a sustainable impact.
I and Oftobkhon now have to prepare for our Global Citizen Day (GCD) and the topic is Human Trafficking. GCD is a day of learning for all ICSE team, we lecture each other on a global issue.

Tallest Flagpole in the World apparently

Our Hotel in Nurak

Community Action Day 1

First Community Action Day (CAD) was a success, we visited a city called Gharm/Garm (not sure how to spell or pronounce it right) which was 3-4hours drive away from the capital city Dushanbe. CAD is part of VSO’s development program where volunteers dedicate a day or two to support a local community on a national issue. This can include teaching, supporting or starting ideas.

Our topic for the first CAD was to introduce business structure, such as the steps required to set up a small business, leadership skills and how to diversify their current products. Garm is the best town to deliver this topic and we had about 27 young people who wanted to improve their understanding. Reason why Garm is the best place to carry out our CAD with the planned topic is because this small town currently suffer from the loss of their young men who leave Garm to go work in Russia, with the hope that they will get better job and opportunity. Some of the men have young family and they leave their wife behind to look after their young ones, and some cannot afford to further their education so the solution is to go Russia to work till they can afford it or just to simply support their family. Majority of Garm young girls are forced to leave education at 16 after 11th grade, with the hope to get married at 18. So from 16 – 18 years old they are at home waiting for someone to marry them.

However, at our CAD we had various young participant with majority of them wanting to start their own business but do not know how to go about it. With most of the guys wanting to find out information on small business they can do so they will not leave their little village for Russia. Our two day workshop was able to empower them with some start-up steps, which we hope can show them the way. Though some of the participants just want to meet our team and use the opportunity to practice their English, but by the end of the two days they were able to understand how to become a leader and take charge of their future.

The feedback’s from the participants proves that our journey to Gharm had a positive impact on the community and its youth.

How time flies!!

It’s been four weeks already, how time flies! You guys are probably wondering, “why is she out there for 12 weeks and what has she been doing since she arrived?”
Well, I’ve been supporting marginalised women to sustain a living, by providing business support. It seems the Technological and Marketing side of things is something that businesses are lacking over here in Tajikistan, many young people and few businesses are just getting themselves set up on facebook to network, but there’s no enthusiasm, because Facebook is constantly getting prohibited here! Caravan of Hope needs our help in advertising their products and reaching a larger market, they are a local organisation and they want to provide a better future for women who use their centre by training them in necessary job skills.
I have been working for nearly four weeks in the Caravan of Hope and so far I have managed to set up a company facebook page, in order to reach a larger market, but facebook might not be as effective as it is in the UK or other western countries. For the short period of time that I have been here, Facebook has been banned twice, it was firstly banned for a week then it was open again… and after two days it’s off again so this will not work well for the business. But there are various other advertising channels that can be used to raise awareness, we have successfully placed an ad in an electronic advertising newsletter aimed at expats, but many tourists also use it to find activities in the city and places to shop. Additionally, we have designed some flyers for their baked goods (cookies & cupcakes) and a flyer for their handicrafts (jeweleries, handbag etc).
Our Objectives at Caravan of Hope are to:
▷ Get support from more people and create a network of loyal customers, such as foreigners who work and live here, so whenever they are going back to their home country they get their souvenirs and gifts for families.
▷ Additionally, to develop relationships with as many organisations as we can, so they can ask the women to supply them with snacks for conferences/seminars etc, this way they will be contributing to the sustainability of a better future for these marginalised women.
Although Facebook is banned here most of the time (and we cannot update our page often), you can still like our page and get more people to know they can buy souvenirs from Caravan of Hope (Korvoni Umed). If you like something just send me the money and I will happily buy and deliver it for you when I arrive back in England :).
Facebook page: Caravan of HOPE – Корвони Умед

**Apologies in advance, my next post might be a while as the internet is not the best over here, also the next few weeks will be very busy for the VSO ICSE team here in Tajikistan, with Community Action day and Global Citizen day on their way, we have a lot of planning and preparation to do.

Dont worry, I will keep you posted though.
Peace and Love.

We are foreigners and strangers in your sight, as were all our ancestors. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope. 1 Chronicles 29:15

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever (Psalms 73:26) 

Jewelry by Korvoni Umed

EiD Mubarak!!!

It’s Eid everybody, let’s all celebrate by eating, eating and then eat some more! Well basically, that’s the message Tajiks are sending across on Eid day. Eid is a yearly celebration that lasts three days after Ramadan (fasting) by Muslims all over the world. They sacrifice a goat or sheep as a symbol of their appreciation to Allah (God). So on this day there is a lot of everything, food, fruits, cakes and more food. People visit each other’s homes from one house to another. The goal here in Tajikistan is to visit as much houses as you can just to celebrate with them.
My host family bought me and Fiona a traditional material that was made into their national outfit. So on this day I got to dress up in Tajik’s national wear. It was a fun day as well as new experience, we started the day by killing goat in our house and by the time we got dressed and ready for the celebration, the goat was ready to be eaten so in order words I had goat for breakfast :). After the goat, we went out to our in-country team leader’s house with the whole team. Soup with meat, potato and carrot is their national meal on this day and we were told every house prepare this meal, as well as cake and other sweet things. All the eating areas are set up for the whole day with cake, fruits, sweets, bread, salad and tea. It is classed as impolite if you didn’t eat anything, so if just a cup of tea you must have something when you visit each house. After the small feast at team leader’s house, we all went back to my house for more food, and was scheduled to visit my host aunt later that day but we were so full that we could not eat anything else, so we politely decline the offer.
Also on this day everybody is in such a happy mood, we got extra attention than usual because of our outfit. We honestly felt so much like a part of them. We also got a few invitations from strangers to follow them to their house to come eat and celebrate which we politely declined because it would just be weird.

The next day the celebration continued, not as big as the day before though but we continued our visit to houses with Chris’ (team member) host family inviting us over. So we ended up going there for lunch. We met his host father and siblings and ate as much as we could, but mainly meat. (What! I’m African we love our meat LOL)
Eid was such an interesting and enjoyable celebration. I learned how to make samosas with my new family, visited other Tajik families. The way people just put their differences aside and come together to celebrate this common event is just amazing. Witnessing how this day is celebrated in another part of the world is interesting and lovely.

Eid Mubarak lovely people

From Tajikistan with Love!!.

Celebrating Eid at my house Nilufa (host sister), Ola, Fiona, Shukrona, Oftobkhon & Chris

Host Dad chilling with the food

At Shukrona’s (team leader) house, eating none stop

Project Begins….

After a week in Tajikistan, I finally started one of my placements. It had been an adventurous six days and trip already, but it was now time to start my main purpose of being here in Tajikistan. As mentioned before, one of my placements will be in a women’s shelter (Caravan of Hope). This shelter is setup to support women in danger, who have experienced sexual abuse, human trafficking, prostitution, etc. Being in a very traditional and religious country, you wouldn’t expect such a thing to be happening, but I guess it’s a global issue. Caravan of Hope provides aid for these women and some of them have young kids too. Physical and emotional help is provided for them and their kids. The shelter offers the women sewing, cooking & baking courses and handicraft session. My purpose at Caravan of Hope is to provide business support to these women and find them customers for their wonderful handmade products and train them on necessary business skills. They make their beautiful jewellery from traditional stones, some called Pamir stones. Designing and working on these products gives the women back their confidence in life, and knowing that people love and appreciate their hand work worldwide. The more jewellery they sell the better chances they have at rebuilding their lives back up slowly using this as a means of on-going income. Opening up a shop is quite expensive and the high taxes make it impossible for these women to do this.  Seeing how they are ambitious and wanting to make a living for themselves made me very determined to help contribute to the success of their business and start their lives back again. So after having a consultation meeting with the managers at the shelter and my counterpart (Oftobkhon), we came up with ideas and suggestions on some things that can be done to help. We started with identifying that the target audience for these products are primarily tourists, these women want foreigners in their country to go back home with something representing Tajikistan. From here on forwards we will be working on how they can attract and sell these products to them.

Meeting British Ambassador in Tajikistan

Today we had a chillax day of rest and in the evening we were scheduled to visit the British Ambassador in Tajikistan. So after an overwhelming day meeting our host families yesterday, and them throwing questions to us left, right and centre we finally had time to rest and still jetlagged even in an unfamiliar place I slept like a baby.

British Ambassador on my right talking to some volunteers, while I sign the record book

Monday was a lay in day as we didn’t start the day till about 2pm. Once ready we headed off to the VSO office in Tajikistan to meet the team so we can all go to the ambassador’s house. At the VSO office we got to meet the current UK VSO team who has been in Tajikistan for 3months and due to leave a week after our arrival, so we met them 3 days before they flew back home. I managed to speak to some of them and most of them did not feel ready to leave yet, as it had been fun experience though challenging but they still found it fulfilling. So I silently thought to myself that I hope in a similar mind-set to them come December, wishing to stay a bit longer than planned. We scheduled to be at the Ambassador’s house at 4pm, upon arrival we were welcomed in a very British manner with Tea and Biscuit and picture of the Queen everywhere (God bless the Queen). The Ambassador (Robin Orb-Smith) was a very friendly person and welcoming, I didn’t get the chance to ask him questions or have a chat, but quite a lot of other volunteers where able to talk to him and ask him questions which was cool. The experience as a whole was very interesting as it was relaxed and not as formal as you would think meeting such an important person would be, even though we all dress up and looking casually smart. But everyone had a good time and was greatful to have had this opportunity.

 

Training/In-country orientation

Once we arrived in Dushanbe capital of Tajikistan, straightaway we travelled to a village outside the city (Varzob) for our in-country orientation/Training. We arrived 5:30am local time, so we managed to have some rest before the training start.

Tajikistan is a really nice country, everyone are friendly and welcoming, the local volunteers where so happy to meet us and had made a sign saying Welcome to Tajikistan which was cool. Varzob is a really calm, lovely place to be and we where here for 3days. They also have some lovely foods, the main thing I looked forward to during our training was the eating part, cause Lunch and Dinner was just the best part of the day 🙂 sorry team leaders LOL but I did learn some things at the training but the food was just too delicious…

After 3days of intensive training we were matched with our counterparts and placement, counterparts are the people we will be working closely with for the next 11 weeks on our placement. My counterpart name is Oftobkhon, she is an enthusiastic person who is willing to learn and was very happy to have me as her partner cause she thinks am funny, well that’s according to her I don’t know if I am :). We were fortunate to be working with two different enterprises, one of the projects will be in a women’s shelter Korvoni Umed in Tajik (Caravan of Hope in English) I will tell you all more about the shelter in the next blog and second placement will be in a microfinance company.

After all the mix and matching we finally travelled back to the city (Dushanbe) where we will be living and working. We met our host families on day 4 of arriving in Tajikistan (the anticipation was real), and I was placed with another UK volunteer which I was really happy about. In my host home, I have a mum, dad, 4 sisters and 1 little brother, but dad will be away from home weekdays and be back weekends as he is a professor at a University outside the city. My new family are happy bunch, they have a strong interest in learning English and we have two young musicians and a doctor in training. Two of the young girls are in Music school and both play Piano and Violin, so they are the house musicians.

The Adventure begins!

17th September 2014

So, the journey begins….. I would love to say it all started smooth but no I would be lying LOL. Before we could even take off, me and my team had a little issue at the airport with everyone of us going over our baggage allowance. Well mainly me, because I went 9kg over (*coverface*), which resulted in me having to wear almost all the clothes in my suitcase 🙂 don’t ask for pictures am not sharing LOL. We finally boarded the plane at 12 midday GMT on the 17th of September.
“And So… The Adventure begins!”
Lets just say it was a long journey with an unpleasant transit in Moscow, where no one was friendly. We finally made it to Tajikistan on the 18th September 2014.
Despite the minor ups and downs the actual journey from England to Tajikistan was made very exciting and fun by my new uniquely interesting bunch. Oh less I forget, we also became overnight celebrities on the transit plane from Moscow to Tajikistan. How? Well basically in our small team of 4, 3 of us are ladies and African. We honestly didn’t know what hit us until we were about to board the last plane in Moscow to our final destination were we started meeting Tajiks at the departure gate.
Oh just one important information if you ever heading to Tajikistan, they do not queue. So yeah, as soon as its time to start checking our boarding passes and getting on the plane, before the staff could make an announcement everyone rushed to the front, it was like something from a survival movie where its about making sure you get on that plane or you will be left behind :).

We were unsure of what was happening with everyone else running except us and they not queuing, being British we tried to be civilized and wait for a queue that wasn’t actually there. So while they waiting for their passes to be checked, they started staring at us and as soon as we got up getting ready to board, their cameras started coming out one by one and they started taking pictures of us. Few people asked us to take pictures with them and even when we said no to some they still posed and someone would take the pics anyways, so we had no say. This is when reality started hitting us and we definately aware we long way from home.
Well after the whole paparazzi moment, we manage to get VIP treatment with everyone giving us way to board the plane first 🙂 and as soon as we were through they went back to their “me first” behaviour. After we finally boarded the plane, the attention didn’t stop with someone asking the only guy on our team if we are his wives. I actually found out later that someone was recording me coming back from the toilet, hmmm the 4hours from Moscow to Tajikistan was an interesting experience but we made it to Tajikistan in the end. And the cultural difference was made known straight from the airport.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven. (Ecclesiastes 3:1)
For me it is now time for a new adventure and to make a difference, according to the most high.