Volunteerism

A couple of weeks ago the Minister of Gender Youth Sports and Recreation announced the launch of the National Volunteer Youth Corps. It will be funded by the United Nations Development Programme and is set up almost like internships for students to gain skills. When it was introduced in parliament it came under some criticism because opposition parties felt like they were not informed and that selection for the Youth Corps could be along party lines. At first I thought it was just typical political jostling - especially because there was a huge banner hung in the middle of Maseru for weeks prior to the announcement. I don't even live in Maseru and I new about this launch. But it turns out youth groups like this in Africa have a tendency of turning into militias – including a similar youth group in Lesotho in the early 90s that evolved into an intimidation force for the Basotho National Party.

This by itself is an interesting topic, but it isn’t really the reason why it got me to write this post. The article got me thinking about the idea of volunteerism and wondering why people volunteer.

Since high school I have spent time volunteering, mostly as a youth soccer coach. I am not exactly sure why. I do enjoy soccer, so becoming a coach seemed natural. I have always known that it is also good for the resume, but I would not say that this was my main motivation. As well, I enjoy being thought of as someone who volunteers. Knowing that other people know that I volunteer makes me feel good about myself. Maybe it is also because I have a hard time saying no to people.

For my current position I am considered a volunteer I suppose. The current title is development worker, but Skillshare is thinking of changing it to international volunteer. I would have a hard time convincing myself that I am a volunteer though since my ‘stipend’ is pretty close to ten times what the average person living in Lesotho earns.

I am sure that other people volunteer because of similar reasons to what I described. I imagine family also plays a large role. Once you have children and those children become engaged in community activities then some parents will get pulled in. Financial security also plays a role. In North America and Europe there is a correlation between civic service and social class.

Lately I have been giving a lot of thought to why people in Lesotho would choose to volunteer. It seems like volunteering is almost a mandatory undertaking. Many of the organizations working here in Mafeteng including: World Vision, Red Cross, the police, government ministries, community based organization, and other NGOs all employ volunteers. These volunteers are almost always unemployed youth who have just recently finished school – either high school or post secondary studies. The programmes I am working with all involve volunteers – which makes things difficult because white people bring jobs and all I am bringing is a training programme for volunteer youth soccer coaches. I think that at least once a week I have been approached by people looking for employment. I explain to them that my project only involves volunteer soccer coaches. They usually have a hard time believing this and will go on to try and convince me that I can find a position for them in my project. On a side note, I have found that the other thing that white people bring to Lesotho is educational scholarships. I think this is also related to the fact that I am Canadian and CIDA

(the Canadian International Development Agency) has provided funding in the past. So, when I introduce myself as Canadian I am often asked if I can sponsor someone’s education. I have also met a number of people who have studied at Canadian universities or have had siblings study in Canada. The picture I have posted here is of a local primary school. It has CIDA on its sign board, but I haven't asked it the school received funding from CIDA.

Anyways, I’m getting off point.

Why do people in Lesotho choose to volunteer? Culturally the idea of helping others is present. Pre-colonial southern African societies relied on collectivism and mutual aid to meet basic needs. Solidarity and reciprocity are strong cultural beliefs. Colonization may have contributed to the erosion of these beliefs through putting pressure on people to provide (how's that for alliteration?) services to the colonial powers as opposed to their communities. The importance of volunteering in a context that involves such a high prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS is also relevant. One of the things I gained from organizing the Coaching for Hope workshop was learning how much people genuinely want to help their communities deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

However, I feel that for the most part volunteering is done to gain skills and contacts in the hopes of obtaining future employment. When 50% of the population is unemployed and so many people are living in extreme poverty, gaining employment has to be a motivating factor. I believe this is the government’s main reason for establishing the National Youth Volunteer Corps. It seems that most graduating students are forced into volunteer positions, so maybe the government is just trying to formalize this process. Or maybe they are establishing militias in the build up to elections in 2012 – I think they are in 2012.

The issue of what motivates the volunteers that I am working with is fairly important for future recruitment and retention, but I have begun to question the retention of volunteers in my situation. I was reading through an evaluation report of one of the organizations I work with and a problem that they identified was losing volunteers to employment with other NGOs. I would not necessarily view this as a problem. I don’t know how you could expect someone to remain a volunteer when they are unemployed and need money to support themselves and possibly their families.

Because of the perception of white people brining jobs I also wonder how many people have signed up for my programme in the hopes that they will be employed by the project in the future. Some Coaching for Hope employees in South Africa, Mali, and Burkina Faso are former volunteer coaches. I don’t know if the volunteers here in Lesotho know this, but I often wonder if it motivates them.

In a way I am glad that I am not in a position to employ anyone. With so many people unemployed, job searches and employment opportunities take on a greater significance. LENEPWHA just recently received applications and interviewed candidates for a position relating to the project I am working on. I had very little input on who was hired. There was a local project advisory committee that held the interviews and chose the candidates. Some of the volunteers for my soccer programme were applying for this position. Because I was working with LENEPWHA, I believe that they thought that I would be able to help them get the position. I am not sure of their qualifications, but they were not chosen for the final interviews. I think they were quite angry with me and resented the fact that I could not get them the job or even an interview. I could only imagine what it would be like if I actually was responsible for hiring someone.

May 17, 2010

Lesotho successful in U-17 and U-20 Qualifying

AGE CHEATING

The Under-17 and Under-20 Lesotho national football teams have made it through the most recent stage of qualification for their African youth championships and will move on to play Cameroon and South Africa respectively. These results have come just after LEFA (Lesotho National Football Association) announced it would not enter the senior team into qualification for the 2012 African Cup of Nations. They made the decision because of financial reasons and also because they wanted to focus on youth development. Obviously, LEFA is using these results to justify and celebrate their decision.

BBC has a radio interview here

The other side of the story is that a lot of people in Lesotho are laughing because they believe that the U-17 and U-20 teams are age cheating, which would definitely not be contributing to football youth development in Lesotho. Age cheating is not something I gave a lot of thought to before arriving here. When I was younger I would sometimes watch the Little League World Series and there would sometimes be accusations that players in that tournament were above the age limits, but it was something I never really encountered growing up. However, from what I have read, and from talking with football people in Lesotho and South Africa, it seems that in Southern Africa, age cheating is quite common place - I would also recommend checking out this article which is quite good regarding ‘football age’ in Africa. The authors of both articles link the problem of age cheating back to poverty and believe that players believe that if they can make their way onto development teams then they will stand a better chance of playing professionally. So, if an 18 year old can find his way onto a professional team’s U-15 development team then he will have a better chance of getting a contract with that professional team.

Today was a holiday in Lesotho, Ascension Day, and a U-15 tournament was held involving eight teams. I wasn’t involved in organizing, but was invited to watch. It is about the fourth local youth tournament I have been able to attend. At every tournament there have been issues with teams using over aged players. I am not sure what the reasons are here in Lesotho because there are no professional teams. I think it might be a combination of the rules not being explained adequately, a lack of underage players, and just over competitiveness.

Maybe it also comes down to cultural perceptions of age. I grew up playing youth sports where every chronological age was separated from Under-5 up to Under-19. Age categorization seems to be a little more flexible here. I think age is perceived less as a fixed number and more as a general time period based on your situation in life. I think this is also evidenced by Sesotho terms associated to people. Men are usually addressed as Ntate and boys are usually addressed as Abute. When I first arrived, I received a couple of introductory Sesotho lessons. During the first lesson the teacher asked if I was an Ntate or an Abute. I said I did not know, but since I am 29 I guess I am an Ntate. The teacher said eh-eh (No). She asked if I was married. I said yes. She then said that I was an Ntate.

During this recent tournament I was talking with some other spectators and they were trying to justify age cheating by saying that everyone does it. They even believed that European and North American athletes are also age cheating to the same extent. I tried to explain that it might be very difficult for Wayne Rooney or Lebron James to falsify their ages, but my arguments didn’t seem to sway them.

May 13, 2010

Coaching for Hope Workshop

I just wanted to post this to give people an idea of what I am doing and will be doing in Lesotho. I alluded to it in my Sport for Development and Peace post, but didn’t provide much detail.

Last week I hosted my first Coaching for Hope workshop. It was one of the more intense working experiences I have gone through. Imagine being placed in a completely new country, a new culture –both social and professional – and having a couple of months to plan a workshop. The workshop runs from 8:30am to 5:00pm for 7 days. It includes food and accommodation for 40 local participants - you also have to recruit these participants - and it also involves hosting four coaches/facilitators from South Africa and the UK. When I write it out it actually doesn't seem that bad, but trust me, it was hectic.

The workshops focus on preparing local coaches to implement soccer sessions as well as HIV/AIDS cross over sessions. A cross over session involves incorporating information on HIV/AIDS and life skills into a soccer session. For example, a cross over session might include a passing game which involves risk and decision making. This activity could then lead into a discussion on high risk and low risk activities and making good decisions.

Overall I believe that the workshop was a success. Unfortunately we lost one of our UK coaches to the Icelandic volcano – not lost as in deceased or sacrificed, but her flights were cancelled.

In my Sport for Development and Peace post I talked quite a bit about my reservations regarding programmes like the one I am working on, but I think going through an actual workshop and seeing the enthusiasm and excitement of the local coaches has provided me with some optimism moving forward. I am optimistic, but still slightly skeptical. It will be interesting to see how it all develops.

If you are interested in Coaching for Hope I would recommend checking out the link I have on the left of my blog. As well as learning about the programme you will get to see pictures of David Beckham when he visited Coaching for Hope in Cape Town. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, he manages to keep his shirt on - I think.

May 4, 2010

Sport for Development and Peace

Sport for Development and Peace

Sport and HIV/AIDS

I have been avoiding posting this for a while because at this point my thoughts are still not clear. But I just finished my first soccer coaching workshop and thought now is as good a time as any. This post basically describes what I am doing in Lesotho. If you are only interested in reading about travel stuff – food, music, dancing, etc then this post might be a bit boring.

The concept of sport for development basically stems from the idea that sport can have some sort of positive social contribution. The thinking is that we can use sport to achieve a number of social objectives ranging from health and educational objectives, to peace and community building, to human rights and issues of equality, to post-disaster relief - I have not checked, but if you Google ‘sport for development’ and Haiti I am sure you will find a number of organizations using sport for some form of post-disaster relief in Haiti. I know that there were sport NGOs operating in South East Asia immediately after the tsunami. Whether these objectives can be achieved through the use of sport is a topic for another time.

What interests me at this moment is the organizations that are using sport to reach health objectives. It interests me because I am currently involved with such an organization – Coaching for Hope. Coaching for Hope is a training organization that works with local soccer coaches. They are partnered with the English FA and deliver football coaching courses that combine technical football coaching and HIV/AIDS education. The idea is that the local coaches will then go into their community and work with youth on football and on HIV/AIDS prevention. HIV/AIDS and sport seems like an odd combination, but for organizations working in this field it is very common. Right to Play, Kicking Aids Out, Grassroots Soccer, and Coaching for Hope are all examples of this. A cynical person might say that this awkward combination is the result of fishing for funding. A more optimistic person might claim that sport offers a way to reach segments of the population that may not be responsive, or have access to, traditional educational approaches. I am a little bit of both.

Frequently, the use of sports for HIV/AIDS education is often clumped together with the claim that these programmes are teaching life skills through sport. My official title for the project I am involved with is Football and Life Skills Coordinator. It makes me cringe a little bit. For some people it is a given that sport can help develop life skills. However, trying to decide what aspects of sport benefit what people and then applying those aspects to completely different cultures becomes incredibly difficult. Are the life skills I learned playing for the Campbell River Youth Soccer Association equivalent to the life skills that youth in Lesotho will gain? Through sport are the skills gained by a middle class Canadian the same as the skills gained by children who are living in extreme poverty, possibly orphaned because of HIV/AIDS, possibly HIV positive themselves, possibly raising younger siblings, and possibly having to earn an income to support themselves?

Maybe I should back up a bit and try to define life skills. It is a very ambiguous term and I think that is the reason why a lot of people will just naturally assume that sport can help develop life skills. UNICEF categorizes life skills as communication and interpersonal skills, decision making and critical thinking skills, and coping and self-management skills. To teach a skill you need to provide someone with knowledge and then they need to be able to apply that knowledge. This is where I have a huge problem with life skills. I believe that sport can teach these skills, but if it is done so without recognizing the context in which the life skills are used then it is basically useless. I might be complicating things a bit, so I think it is easier if I relate a newspaper article I read during my first week in Lesotho.

HIV POSITIVE MAN CONVICTED OF RAPE

The story is about the rape of a 16 year old girl by a man who is HIV positive. The headline itself is probably common, but what struck me was how the man tried to defend or justify what he did.

“I admit that I chased and stabbed her with a knife. She consented to sex because she was scared.”

His defense was that he did not rape her because she consented to sex as a result of him stabbing her.

This is where I feel there is a disconnect between the programmes that teach life skills and the cultures in which they are working. This girl could have received the best life skills training in the world. She could have known everything about HIV, but she is in a culture in which she is not able to implement those life skills. If a girl can be raped, if a wife is not allowed to refuse sex with her husband, if a women does not have the power to demand the use of a condom, if a young man is so poor that he has to focus on earning enough to feed himself, then what can life skills education hope to achieve?

I am not arguing against education. Obviously education is necessary and it has results when targeted at appropriate populations. Whether that education is the responsibility of international sporting NGOs or the responsibility of the government and the educational system could be a topic for another time.

I guess my main point is that the focus on using sports to develop life skills or to change individual behavior is a distraction. If a person is able to change their behavior, but that behavior is not accepted by the community or is not able to be practiced because of differences in power then little good has been done. Is it possible instead for these organizations to focus on the bigger issues?

Can sport be used to challenge traditional gender roles and norms?

Can sport be used to empower marginalized groups to seek equality?

Basically, can sport foster social change within a culture?

April 22nd, 2010