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Volunteer’s Blog – February 18: Flood Relief Event

As I sat in the Sunrise Café (perhaps the only establishment in Battambang with a selection of authentic AND fresh European baked goods) enjoying my apple strudel and a current issue of The Cambodia Daily, it suddenly dawned on me that not even one of the articles featured updates on Cambodia’s relatively recent floods. In fact, I can’t recall the last time the news mentioned a word about the disaster!
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Volunteer’s Blog – February 8: A Chance Encounter

I love to travel. There are some innate qualities about traveling that is simply addicting, be it the beautiful sights, culture, people, food…or maybe it’s just the general novelty of it all. Similar to most tourists, I’ve always just passed through; I stay long enough to point and click the initial excitement into digital (aka Facebook accessible) memories, but never quite long enough to soak in the essence of the place.
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Ken’s Updates from Malawi: January 20-22

January 19

In one of our rural communities, Kang’oma, the villagers have added tree farming as a way to retain soil moisture, provide food and building materials, and add natural fertilizer to the soil. 12 months ago they planted 300 trees — 32 have died, which isn’t such a high number — and from today, they’re planting another 150 or so. Here’s our key community organizer, the wonderful Lameck Mandevu, planting one of the first seedlings.

Kang'oma Garden: Here's our key community organizer, the wonderful Lameck Mandevu, planting one of the first seedlings.

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Malawi Volunteer Blog: January 14 – 22

Entry 4: Liwonde National Park

This weekend, Arichie, Mike and I made a trip to Liwonde National Park, which is about 4 hours away from Lilongwe. We had a great time. The drive down was just spectacular; the countryside of Malawi is so beautiful. At one point, we were driving on one road where one side was Malawi and the other side was Mozambique. On the way back, we ended up getting gas at Mozambique, since the gas crisis has been really tough, especially these last few weeks. Because we were on the Mozambique side, we couldn’t get in trouble by the police, and that was also why people could sell the gas directly on the road; it was a pretty interesting loophole!

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Malawi Volunteer Blog: January 6-13

January 6, 2012

Malawi Day 1!

This January I am interning with F2F in Malawi! I will be getting to know the Chadika community that Colby College’s LuziCare club funds, and I will be working with their youth group in particular. I just got here today, and I am already in love with the place! It is so beautiful and green (partly due to the rainy season), and everyone is very friendly. Lilongwe seems to be an interesting place; hopefully I’ll get my bearings and be able to navigate on my own soon; though I’m still a bit nervous being out by myself! However, the project leaders down here Arichie and Mike have been helping me out a bunch, they are awesome! I am really excited for this experience, I am going to meet so many wonderful people and get to know a culture completely different from my own. Well, more to follow, time to get my feet wet!
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Ken’s Updates from Malawi: January 16-19

January 17

Just arrived in Malawi yesterday — looking forward to 2 weeks of some very exciting ventures. Here is a photo I took today that is special to me — it shows our two leaders of our Face-to-Face Malawi field office, Mike (in white) and Arichie (in black) with Martha and Laws Chiunda, who were instrumental in getting our work in Malawi off the ground back in 2006. I met Laws the first day I landed in Malawi in fact.

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Volunteer’s Blog – January 12: Christmas in Cambodia

I’ve never been a big fan of Santa Claus.  I held up my part of the bargain and left the plate of cookies, so where in the world is that puppy, or that unicorn I wished for?  Correct me if I’m wrong but you’ve got to earn the cookies in my house (I don’t make the rules, my mother does, so take it up with her).  But this year, I am express mailing a huge package of cookies from Cambodia to the North Pole with a note saying:”Dear Santa, YOU ROCK!”

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A Successful Gala on December 9

We raised close to $50,000 for our new community center for people suffering from HIV and poverty in Siem Reap, Cambodia at our first ever gala event in the Grand Room at the Open Center on 30th Street and Madison Avenue. F2F’s board of directors, staff, and a valuable team of volunteers hosted around 100 people at the event, which included an open bar, homemade hors d’oeuvres, a continuous loop slide show, a stunning depiction of the community center and the people who’ll benefit from it, presentations, and announcements of donations received throughout the night.

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Volunteer’s Blog – December 13: My Little Beethovens

“One, two, three, four, fingers up! Wrist down! One, sit straight! Two, three, don’t speed! Knuckles up! Four . . . don’t forget to breathe!”

For about one to two hours each day after school, these are the commands I repeat over and over…and over again. Yes, I’ve even uttered these commands in my sleep.  No, yours truly have not gone mad…yet*, nor have I become a military sergeant.  I am what some call a piano teacher.
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Volunteer’s Blog – December 5: Down to Zero

In honor of the 24th anniversary of World AIDS Day, SCC collaborated with other NGOs such as US-CDC and KHANA to organize a walk against HIV/AIDS in Battambang, Cambodia.  For those of you who might not be too familiar with World AIDS Day, it is held on December 1st of each year and was created with the goal of uniting people worldwide in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The message this year is “Getting Down to Zero”. Zero new HIV infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS-related deaths (International AIDS & HIV Charity, Avert.org)
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