For a long time, I’ve been curious about the world beyond my comfortable bubble in North East London. When I began university, I realised that there were paths I could take to one day hopefully make a positive impact on the global issues that indirectly affect me. I made the difficult decision to change my university course from English Literature to International Development (with social anthropology and politics) and despite the numerous times of doubt and worry, I can now say that it has been the best decision I have ever made in my short twenty years!

This summer, for three months, I will be volunteering in Zimbabwe with a youth-led charity called Restless Development – a charity in partnership with the government programme International Citizen Service (ICS). Restless Development work with countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia with communities who have requested helped from and who want to be involved with ICS schemes. The projects in Zimbabwe specifically focus on livelihoods and employment, sexual and reproductive health and civic participation.

I depart at the beginning of June (exact dates to be confirmed), and after attending my pre-departure training, I am a mixture of excitement, curiosity, anxiety ~~and fear~~! However, I know that whatever I face as soon as touching down in Zimbabwe will be life-changing. I will be paired with a female volunteer from Zimbabwe, and together we will work on an ongoing project in our village (which will be in the Bulilimamangwe district)

There are two things that really attracted me to Restless Development when looking for volunteer work overseas;

1. As part of their partnership with ICS, they seek to run sustainable projects. When I arrive in Zimbabwe to get started on my volunteer work, I will be building on the incredible work that has already been done, and is currently being done in the community I will be based. This is really important to me, as I feel that there is a level of reassurance that communities are benefiting from and also encouraging the volunteer participation from Restless.

2. Restless Development is a youth-led development organisation, working with and for young people. The charity seeks to improve the lives of young people directly affected by poverty, encouraging their participation in decisions and actions that impact and influence their lives. Restless also seek to provide a means of education to support these young people in areas which all youth globally are affected by, but which young people living in the developing world are made more vulnerable to! As well as this, ICS and Restless are an open platform for any young people in the UK wanting to get involved in development work, regardless of background. This is something I believe is unique to the ICS programme, which I didn’t seem to find in others when looking for volunteer work, and all of these factors confirmed that this is a project I want to get involved in.

As a part of this incredible journey, I need to raise £800 for Restless Development. I would like to firstly say that none of these donations will be going towards my volunteer placement. Instead they will be going directly to Restless to support the amazing projects the run. Any donations made will be hugely appreciated, and please dig deep because they are going to an incredible cause!

http://www.justgiving.com/Emma-Blair0

I will be continuing to blog to track my volunteer journey, and I’d love it if you could all join me! I will be posting again when I find out some more details specific to my work placement, and I also plan to blog as much as I can when getting out to Zimbabwe (however, I’m not sure how possible this will be!)

Check out some more about Restless Development’s projects:

http://restlessdevelopment.org/what-we-do

http://restlessdevelopment.org/globalstrategy

http://restlessdevelopment.org/zimbabwe