This is a note for my colleagues at work, from a recent trip visiting VSO Million Hours Fund work in Mozambique
Monday 11th October began my Africa week with a visit to a hedge fund which specialises in Africa. I’ve never spoken to a hedge fund before... but I had met the founder at a parliamentary event on women in leadership in Africa and followed up to see if there was any interest in supporting our work. Then later that same day it was a flight to Mozambique via Addis Ababa. The mission was to be with donors as they saw some of the work they are helping to fund through the Million Hours Fund. You’ll know that by raising £1m we are trying to create a million hours of national volunteering in 4 countries, 1 of which is Mozambique. A lot of preparation had gone into the visit as we know how important it is to demonstrate the outcome of our work. And we knew too that although the money to VSO Mozambique from the Fund is limited, the donors would in some ways view VSO and the Fund on the basis of what they saw in Maputo, so we were grateful to our colleagues there for their preparatory work too. There were 2 of us from the London office and 3 couples who are some of the donors to the Fund, and the plan was to give them 2 full days of exposure and interaction, with briefings either end.
After landing in the afternoon of Tuesday I met with UK volunteers we have in Mozambique and VSO Mozambique staff. I realise I am in a position to have the opportunity to meet with other VSOers in-country and when I do I get that real sense of One VSO. Wednesday was some meet & greet airport runs, London work which gets done at the start and end of my days, and then in the evening the briefing with the donors and the Country Director and Programme Manager, where we talked about the context of Africa, Mozambique, the Fund, and what we would see for the next 2 days.
Thursday was a full day where we visited the focus of some of the work of national volunteers funded by the Million Hours initiative. We went to one of the oldest and poorest slum suburbs in Maputo, Chamanculo, District C, where we first met with the Administrator of the Municipality and then the local government representative of C district. The Administrator was a strong woman, good to see a woman in charge, and hear her talk about the work which needs to be done in her community, particularly given that gender equality is one of the needs which the community consultation, has identified.
Driving through the community the need is obvious: dirt roads, houses which sometimes have a roof, lack of water and sanitation, open drainage ditches, unemployment. We saw how locally mobilised volunteers had worked on cleaning waste ditches and improved sanitation in a local market. We had a community meeting under a tin roof and heard from community members themselves what they thought of the MHF-funded work. The Municipal Administrator joined us too, to a hero’s welcome, one of their own. An award ceremony took place with donors giving our certificates for ‘hours volunteered’ by the national volunteers, and this being Africa there was dancing of course. Those simple laminated A4 sheets seemed to make people happy and proud and we were told were a valued item which would encourage others to consider volunteering too. On then to a community training centre where community members are learning about raising chickens, making furniture and bricks, and handicrafts, skills learnt through national volunteers, so they can try to earn their own living. And a late communal buffet to talk more and be together.
Another early start on Friday to visit 2 homes of families living with HIV/AIDS with the national volunteers who care for them. This was a tough experience for everyone involved. There are drugs and advice services but accessing them is hard for many people, so the national volunteers try to assist fellow community members, and many of the volunteers are living with HIV and AIDS too. Food can be scarce so people are hungry and it also means the drugs can’t always work properly. And of course if you are sick you can’t work and earn money. The vicious poverty circle. We met two young men who apparently are a little stronger but clearly very sick. A big impact on all of us and many questions. We met with a local partner of VSO who talked some more about the challenges faced every day and who wants to carry on working with VSO to tackle them.
We drove then to a youth employment centre and met again with some of the young volunteers who come from Chamanculo who we’d met the day before. We walked around the courtyard with the Director of the government’s National Youth Institute, another strong woman, considering the challenge of youth unemployment in Maputo and Mozambique, where most of the population is under 35. We saw leather belts being made, cloths being woven and metalwork being wrought. We were entertained by singing and dancing and of course had to join in! We chatted together and an international volunteer from Canada tried to learn words from one of the 40 local dialects from one of the young men from Chamanculo. He said he’d learned English ‘under the trees’, a lovely phrase I thought for picking a language up. Then lunch and talk of the work which needs to be done in the country as we got a little shade from the hot sun.
Our final night with the donors and local colleagues was a little bit of a social evening in the cultural centre where we listened to local music, though we couldn’t stay up late enough to hear the star diva, who used to be the receptionist at VSO!
It’s Saturday night and I write this on the plane to Addis Ababa and then an overnight flight to London. Lots of thoughts and feelings to process. I know we are committed to the fight against poverty, that is why we work at VSO, and do what we do in our own lives. It’s important to remember this I think as we do our day to day jobs which can sometimes seem removed from our part in the work of eradicating poverty. In Mozambique again I saw the need so starkly, and saw again why we need to work so hard to make our vision of a world without poverty as real as we each can.

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