London Blog

And here is Ben's first blog...

My name is Ben I am from Nigeria on a programme called global xchange which means is an international volunteer programme which gives young people at the age of 18-25 the opportunity to share ideas, skills and also achieve knowledge from each other and other people in and around the community they are being placed, they volunteers are been placed in different host home (in counterpart pairs) and organisation in which they volunteer in that community for three months and then move to the other community for second phase which is also three months, my organisation or my volunteer placement is a secondary school in Akure (Nigeria) I teach the kids computer from the stone age when early man start his life to the information age when computers were available for everybody, the kids were amazing and always concentrating in the class. I usually organised debate and quiz for them every two, two weeks after that I conducted test and exams for them 85% got credit while 10% got pass and that was really encouraging to me and their principal was very impressed about their performance and she even promised to get more text books and computers for them. Every Wednesday and Fridays of the week we organised GCD (global citizenship day) and CAD (community action days) the GCD is between two counterpart pairs who are staying in the same house, me and my counterpart did our GCD on volunteering, the importance, benefit and also it’s disadvantages. And the CAD comprise of everybody including the people of the community we normally ask the people what is their problems in the community so when get their answer we react on it, some say free education and climate change and unemployment etc so we organise a seminar we mount a bill board, distribute waste bin to market women and taxi drivers and also visit primary and secondary schools all in the name of education and climate change, we also visit some of the commissioners, their governor pleading with them to always here the cry of the people so they agreed to their best. Before I come London I was having deferent kinds thoughts, things that crushed on my mind were racism, unfair treatment people not being friendly, people talk very fast, they drink a lot, time conscious etc some of my perception were true while some are not, everything seems to be different here in London and choosing my placement I really wanted to work with Street League because I love sports and also like working with different people and I made to understand that Street League is all about converting the lives of disadvantaged people to become better than they expected and after that the unleashed them to the community, and that really add more grease my elbow.