thinking for tomorrow…

… is the mantra of the Big Beyond Foundation and it really resonated with me! It’s the whole ‘give a man a fish vs teach a man to fish’ thing and it’s easy to see how it is brought to life in the projects which are run here.

For example, today I was collecting seedlings in the forest – seedlings which  will take 20-40 years to ‘grow up’. They are then planted and grow in the Big Beyond garden until they are big enough to give to farmers to plant on their lands to try and restore the Bwindi forest to its former glory…talk about long term goals!

The high level project areas are Health, Enterprise & Tourism, Conservation & Environment and Culture. And education in all these areas is what pulls it all together to benefit the local community. People are very poor here, the majority are farmers and job opportunities are few and far between and totally dependent on the gorillas and tourism in general!

Since the volunteer experience is tailored to my skills and interests I have been able to give some input into what I will be spending my next few weeks doing…here some highlights:

• Design and deliver service training programme for the local lodges (should just about be able to manage that!)
• Create plot design and project plan for the new Big Beyond ‘Community Centre’ – this is a really exciting project!
• Help create and organise a bird catalogue (not really my forte but will get to look at many beautiful bird pics!)
• English lessons
• Work with the Big Beyond hospitality team to improve the running of the volunteer house and the overall volunteer experience
• Help set up a mother & baby group (think this may be lowest priority)
• Create a project and event plan for the annual Trail Run that Big Beyond organises each year

So lots to do…and it’s exciting to be able to produce some tangible deliverables that volunteers coming after me can use to engage and educate the community.

Will write separately about the people and where I’m staying – it’s difficult to get enough internet to upload photos to the blog, so…

Oh and if you want to read more about the organisation, here you go: http://www.bigbeyond.org