After completing an LLM in Human Rights Law from Giffith College Dublin, Ciaran Finn (24) wanted to gain experience and give back so he decided to volunteer abroad.

Finn searched on the internet for volunteer opportunities and discovered Projects Abroad, a global volunteering organization with placements in over 30 destinations all over the world. He was placed at the Human Rights project in Arusha, Tanzania where he would assist Inherit Your Rights, a local NGO.

“It needs help as it is a small organization with huge ambition and a lot of different projects that are very worthwhile. They primarily assist local Maasai widows who have little knowledge of the legal rights to the land and property once their spouse dies.”

While in Tanzania, Finn lived with a local host family with other volunteers and reported to work five days a week from 9am – 1pm. The volunteers engaged in research, preparing radio scripts, developing educational lectures, interviewing the Maasai widows and assisting them with the greeting card project which provided income for the women and funding for the NGO.

“I learned a lot about the general difficulties in law in the region and specifically the plight of widowed Maasai women. I feel particularly my contribution to the education research definitely made a difference and their feedback reflects this! Volunteers can have as much responsibility as they wish to take on. Jana, the co-founder of Inherit Your Rights, is very open to new ideas and change and the use of initiative is highly encouraged.”

Finn had always intended to make a career in Africa in either development or law and found his three months as a volunteer very useful. A few weeks after finishing his placement, Finn learned that Projects Abroad wanted to hire ...

After completing an LLM in Human Rights Law from Giffith College Dublin, Ciaran Finn (24) wanted to gain experience and give back so he decided to volunteer abroad.

Finn searched on the internet for volunteer opportunities and discovered Projects Abroad, a global volunteering organization with placements in over 30 destinations all over the world. He was placed at the Human Rights project in Arusha, Tanzania where he would assist Inherit Your Rights, a local NGO.

“It needs help as it is a small organization with huge ambition and a lot of different projects that are very worthwhile. They primarily assist local Maasai widows who have little knowledge of the legal rights to the land and property once their spouse dies.”

While in Tanzania, Finn lived with a local host family with other volunteers and reported to work five days a week from 9am – 1pm. The volunteers engaged in research, preparing radio scripts, developing educational lectures, interviewing the Maasai widows and assisting them with the greeting card project which provided income for the women and funding for the NGO.

“I learned a lot about the general difficulties in law in the region and specifically the plight of widowed Maasai women. I feel particularly my contribution to the education research definitely made a difference and their feedback reflects this! Volunteers can have as much responsibility as they wish to take on. Jana, the co-founder of Inherit Your Rights, is very open to new ideas and change and the use of initiative is highly encouraged.”

Finn had always intended to make a career in Africa in either development or law and found his three months as a volunteer very useful. A few weeks after finishing his placement, Finn learned that Projects Abroad wanted to hire ...

David Powis (UK) and Sara Edmonds (Ireland) talk about volunteering with the Microfinance Project in Arusha, Tanzania.

At first, I do a shootout to everyone who reads my blog. I'm collecting stuff for the school, like paper and pencils. I need people who want to donate money for this, to help me get the stuff together and send it here. If you want to help me, please contact me on facebook. For the people from my running group, go to Laura, she coordinates it for me in Holland!

Thankyou.

Friday 3 May

Woke up early, so I took an easy morning. We went with a small group into town, just to walk around a bit. We went to Shopwrite for lunch, so we sat down at a cafe with the most horrible pizza's ever!!

A funny story: When we sat in a daladala, a little bus which drives around town, they had to fit a goat in it! It took like 5 minutes to close the back door, so funny, haha!

In the midday, we left for Engikaret. We had to wait for 2 hours to finally go there, so that was pretty annoying! Our priest, Father Renatus, is the most funny man ever!  He makes the best jokes, and is just a wonderful person to be around! There are over 200 children in Engikaret, and they are all very nice. For what I've seen now, it's a nice village, with a lot of nice people!

Saturday 4 May

Woke up at 7, to go for a nice half hour run. The area is really nice to walk in, haven't seen any elephants yet though! In the midday we went to Arusha, so we had a nice lunch at Stiggybucks, very nice restaurant with cheap, good food! After lunch, we went to the Maasai Market in town. Such a shame it was raining really badly. It's fun to walk around in at the market, but everyone tries to get you in his shop, and try to sell his or her stuff at a higher price because we are white. Bought some really nice stuff, for not to much money.

After the market, we went back to Shopwrite to  the internetcafe, we're I wrote ...

Dear Readers,

It has been a big week this week! The beginning of the week was focused on looking after the victims of the bomb blast. That took up a lot of the time, especially when to do the dressings for the patients the gauze that is used has to be cut up and folded and then sent to be sterilized. There was a lot of folding done this week. The more serious victims were air lifted out to Dar so at this stage there are only about 5 patients left from the blast. Needless to say, I haven’t as yet returned to the RCH.

Yesterday, the 9th of May, was the best day so far. I spent the morning in the surgical ward assisting with the dressings and following the doctors on their rounds. Later in the day, just as things were winding up for the day, there was word of a woman in labour in the maternity ward. The offer was made that I could go and watch. This woman had been in labour since at least 7 am the previous day and was sent home later that day as she wasn’t progressing. She came back that morning at 11am and she had progressed to be 7cm dilated. It was around 1430 when I joined the room. There was another volunteer from another company, Nicole, watching and comforting the lady who was in labour. We would take turns swapping in and out, comforting her with each contraction. This was a difficult task as both of us didn’t speak Swahili and she couldn’t speak English. When the doctor came to review her at around 1530 she hadn’t progressed any further so they had to start thinking about other options.

In the meantime a Masai woman was rushed into the room; attention was shifted from the first lady to the woman who was discovered to have been fully dilated and ready to deliver. The doctor had returned to get consent for the ...