Development Instructor Program - Denmark

Back in 2008 I spent more than 3 months on the most wonderful continent that I could have ever imagined. This year I will be going back to do some 'meaningful travel' in the form of project work within communities in Malawi. The project I will be going to is a Teacher Training College. This will involve training primary school teachers for rural areas. But there is a wide scope of the work I can do here as we will have contact with the community.

Right now I am living in Denmark near an area called Spøttrup which is North-West of Copenhagen, as part of a Development Instructor program. We spend 6 months here training and studying in preparation for project work in Africa. We live and work in a school centre and work together with teachers to help with special needs teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18. In our spare time we can choose to study about many topics related to the world, Africa and our chosen projects. Some examples of study topics include: Malaria, HIV/AIDS, history of Africa or specifically of different African countries, global warming and climate change, Grameen Bank, child soldiers, the United Nations, The Arab World, Fair Trade, globalization, the situation in the world, optimum nutrition, China's Africa policy, etc. There are hundreds of different topics and as you can see there is plenty of variety to choose from.

We work on a points system of 4 categories. Work, Study, Courses and Experiences. Our work is the work we do here in the school with the students. Our studies are as mentioned above and study tasks can be done on our study database or we can research and complete tasks in areas that are not necessarily included on the database but are related to our projects or are relevant areas to study about. The courses include giving presentations to our fellow team, initiating discussions on various subjects, watching a film or documentary and then discussing it after wards or giving a small presentation about it, reading an article and discussing it, doing some different activities with your team which could be related to an area you are studying. For example, if you are going to Mozambique you need to learn Portuguese, so you could organise some language activities or a workshop for everyone to join in. Basically you can be as creative as you like. Experiences include school excursions, Easter and Summer camps, events such as Summer Theatre, Olympics and New Years Concert, common study weekends and building weekends which are organised with Development Instructors from other schools where we do different activities and workshops together. We write reports from these experiences to generate reflection and to gain Experience points.

Many of the experiences we have and the things we do here in Denmark either directly or indirectly help us develop skills and gain knowledge that will help at our projects in Africa. I have been here for 8 weeks now and am looking forward to the many challenges and experiences to come. Watch this space!