Ugandan Volunteers arrive

Our team of Ugandan volunteers arrived today on Monday 12th July, with 4 more arriving on 13th.

All of the volunteers, Dani, Natalie, Vicki, Anna, Heidi, Becki, Catherine, Kajsa, Krupa, Laura and Fiona arrived on 12th and Jiahann, Theodora, Kathryn and Nicola arriving 13th.

They have all settled well into their bandas, which is the accommodation they will be staying in for the next few weeks. They were able to have a look around the wildlife centre which we are staying in, and even said hello to a giraffe who is in an enclosure next to where we are staying, I think he will be a great neighbour to have!

This evening we have all been for a meal at a restaurant a few minutes away and are looking forward to the day tomorrow (13th) where we will begin inductions and introducing the start of the project.

A few creepy crawlies here and there made the evening particularly funny, with Heidi and Dani jumping out of their seats when a small spider was making its way across the table!

We met some lovely waiters and the security guards where we are staying were happy to meet all of our Yebo volunteers.

Meeting primate conservation organisations

Today we used our day in our week of development before the arrival of our volunteers, to get to know some other primate conservation organisations in the area.   These included Ngamba Island Chimpanzee sanctuary and The Great Primate Handshake.

Ngamba Island, based in Entebbe are a sanctuary to the home of just over 40 chimpanzees, all whom have been rescued and reintegrated into the group on the Island. Part of what we are planning with Ngamba, is to run some educational activities with them and the children from Raising up hope orphanage.  We invited Patrick from Raising up hope to  join us on the island to meet with Silver, Stany and Byron, who are some of the education managers and primate keepers.

We are now excited about trying to make some plans for our education therapy activities about chimpanzees and are currently looking at various ideas to benefit the children from the slums and orphanage, allowing them to relate their trauma and behaviours to that of the chimpanzees, and participating in creative, expressive primate education activities.We are very excited about this and the work we will be doing in the next few weeks.

While on the Island we met up with an organisation called ‘The Great Primate Handshake’ who raise awareness for primate conservation through the use of digital media.  The Great Primate Handshake were visiting the island with their group of volunteers who were there with their cameras, making films and doing interviews.

Speaking to some of the volunteers, they appear very passionate about the work that they are doing and are putting together some great educational content.  We have also worked with the Handshake in the UK, where they have helped us run our primate days for children at children’s hospice siblings days.  In 2008 we were lucky enough to meet them in South Africa where they helped us to make a video about some of our aims with our projects at Letaba special needs school.  The Great Primate Handshake are a fantastic organisation, and we feel very lucky to have been able to work with them.  You can find out more about their work here…

So we look forward to the next few days where we will be working out our programmes for the children and sanctuaries for the next few weeks ahead, and the long term sustainable development of the projects within the community of the local people and culture in Uganda.

Developing projects with the people of Uganda, preparing for the volunteers

Yebo arrived in Uganda on 28th June, preparing, developing and increasing our aims as a charity.  As a charity develops, we find that our projects and aims are increased, with more ideas and needs of the individual people we speak to and organisations that we are working with.

Being able to speak directly to those in the community helps us understand Ugandan culture more than we do, helping our projects develop in the right direction. The cultural differences between where we are based in the UK, to Uganda and also South Africa are different in each country.  The English support systems that are in place, are often alien to those from other cultures, that for them do not fit into their communities, and of course the reverse.

If we are to make a difference in the work that we are doing, we continually have to ask ourselves the questions “Are we going about this the right way?” and “Have we asked the local people we are trying to help how we can benefit them”

Waiting for our Yebo volunteers to arrive to help us with these challenges and the hands on work that we will be doing, is something that we would not be able to do without them.  Our group in April allowed us to develop the projects to the next level, our group arriving on the 13th of July will be helping even further with development.

Many projects are being put in place for our volunteers here in Uganda, with new ones and ideas being expressed everyday. Yebo have been meeting and talking to many local people and organisations about the development of our work which is bringing us exciting challenges!.

Yebo met with the local newspaper who were interested in our work and the animal assisted therapy side of the charity.  An article will now be published in the Ugandan Entebbe paper/magazine.  We are also meeting the primate handlers, keen to help us with the behaviour, stories and rescues of the chimpanzees under their care, allowing us to gain knowledge on this subject and how this will be used to support trauma in children.  The observation we will be doing with the chimpanzees is exciting, and the chimpanzees, of course are also very keen to meet our volunteers!

We have also met with Patrick, the director of Raising up hope orphanage where we will be working, supporting the children under his care.  Many projects of sustainability are being discussed.  Our volunteers are going to be working hands on with the children along with helping to develop the new ideas and future projects which we are all very excited about!

Our discussions have also been with the team who work with Ngamba island chimpanzee sanctuary where our volunteers will be visiting, learning and observing the chimps, their individual stories and the amazing recovery process that each individual has been through.  The staff here are extremely experienced, some working with chimpanzees for 30 years.

We have today met a man called Solomon, on a placement for 3 months at the wildlife sanctuary.  Solomon, 24 is studying at Makerere university, on a 3 year course for Environmental management in the department of geography.

Solomon says he feels very passionately about conservation and has helped in the rehabilitation of a baby chimpanzee who had been rescued as an orphan.  He tells of how the young chimpanzee was then released into the wild.  The chimp was marked and tracked due to groups of chimpanzees often rejecting foreign chimpanzees unknown to them. After some time, the chimpanzee was successfully accepted. Solomon studies conservation relationships in Eco systems, saving energy, conflict resolution and communication skills with the local community where he also works to advise the community how to help with conservation.

His passion lies in aquatic life where he would like to focus his career on river management, taking care of rivers, lakes and the wetlands, helping animals such as the Shoebill stork.  He stated that in 1986 16% of Uganda was wetland, the home to many animals. Now in 2010 there is only 10%, and they are still losing this due to land claims.

Solomon describes nature as “The voiceless” and that we can fight for the right of the voiceless

He concludes by telling me

“Nature would never let me down”

Monkey’s got talent….children’s hospice primate day!

Monkey’s got talent children’s hospice primate day 2010

On the 12th June, siblings from Noahs ark children’s hospice in Islington took part in a yebo primate day. For this group the theme, ‘Monkey’s got talent’ was chosen.

The children spent time learning about primates from all over the wolrd and watched a film about the feelings and behaviours that monkeys have.  They also watched monkeys with disabilities in the film. Some of the children may have brothers or sisters with disabilities so the day was based on working together as a team, getting to know eachother and relating humans to primates through their feelings and behaviours.

The children then split into groups and each thought of a situation that a primate family would go through in the jungle. Some of the groups came up with having a family member that gets lost in the trees and the others are sad because of this.  Others came up with having too many bananas, letting a gang of bad monkeys steal them.  The children planned all these stories and then decided how they wanted to show this in the group. Some of them decided they would do the dancing, others did the music and made musical instruments, played the sounds on the keyboard and also listened to their favourite music tracks on the CD player.  Others made up dances and dressed up as monkeys using the music and costumes.  The script writers decided to be part of the play by dressing up as trees, and holding up the story boards as they went along.

The children all practised and rehearsed their play and a lot of fun was had.  They made many props such as leaves, bananas and fruit which was all used in the dressing up costumes that some of them made.  Others put on the fluffy monkey suits!

With our backdrop covered with 3 red buzzer crosses with Simon, Louis and Amander written underneath, it was time to try to impress the judges, to win a place in the finals!

Our judges who we named Simon, Louis and Amanda sat in the three chairs in front of the stage, ready for the performance.

The children put on their play, using their dancing, costumes, music and creative story writing. After the play our version of Ant and Dec asked the team how they thought it went? The children said they thought it went well, and getting into the finals would mean so much to them as they have been practising for this moment!

The judges were then asked for their comments, with Amanda and Louis both expressing a lot of positive feedback, and Simon who commented that when he first saw them in the audtion process, he thought that they would never be that good, and that they had now impressed him and thought that they were in with a good chance of winning the whole competition!

The children then watched their performance back on the projector screen so they could see their creative play that they had put on.

The children were all very excited as they were put through to the final!

So lets see in the final if they can win…..

Monkey’s got talent 2010!

Laura Harrison leads the Noahs Ark siblings days.  Noahs ark is a children’s hospice service supporting children who are not expected to reach their 19th birthday.  Siblings days are an important part of the support that is given to all of the family members. Siblings days give the children a chance to share their lives with eachother, as well as making new friends and having lots of fun!

Training weekend in Guildford, Surrey

On the 29th and 30th May, spread between the days, more than 60 volunteers of all ages and background joined the Yebo team at Loseley house in Guildford Surrey.

Watch our video below to get an idea of how the day went:

The Chestnut lodge building was used for our weekend which was open to all.

The day consisted of talks and information by professional therapists and a child protection officer, along with staff from London zoo and Uganda.  The days covered a range of topics listed below:

Listening skills

Play therapy

Communicating with children with disabilities

Child abuse in the UK and Africa

Music therapy

Ugandan slums

Cultural talks

Animal assisted therapy

Primate conservation

Post traumatic stress disorder in children and primates.

Volunteers were given detailed information on each of the subjects and took part in a number of activities over the 2 days, including using play toys to make up stories in the play therapy talk, listening skills activities, looking at communicating to each other through music, making their own flip flop from recycled materials and even had the pleasure of meeting ‘Merlin’, a lovely dog brought in by Tammy Loya, who is a member of staff in our South African team.  Tammy is a physiotherapist and also manages a large team so is a very valuable member of our team out in Africa. This activity was used in the animal assisted therapy talks.

Peace Nakitto from Uganda, flew over to the UK, specifically for the training weekend to speak to volunteers about the culture in Uganda and South Africa.  This is something we find is an important part of the volunteering experience in the Yebo projects  as the activities and support may be used in a different way abroad. Peace also helps our project when we are in Uganda.

Veronica Etherington is a play therapist who works for CHASE hospice care for children.  She also works with Heather Tilley who is a family and bereavement counselor and Fiona Armitage who is an occupational therapist.  Fiona works with many children with disabilities and spoke a lot about the communication when working in this environment.

Staff members from Nordoff Robins kindly spoke to us about Music therapy.  Alasdair Davies works at London zoo and also travels abroad to conserve primates.  Alasdair spoke to the group about primate conservation.

Hayley Green works for the Surrey child protection team and spoke to the group about child abuse in the UK and Africa.

Below, Sylvian Timberly, a student at Bradford University writes about her experience of the day.

“SERENDIPITY
Definition
The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.
——-
The experience was truly so….      I found that  each presenter used
individualistic techniques to effect.   However, the most memorable
topic for me was introduced by Peace concerning her homeland, Uganda.
Her presentation encouraged me to make a decision to join the group
visit in July.

All lectures were interestingly presented to ensure audience attention
and the participatory  factor ensured that participants  did not nod
off due to the effects of  the early start and warm atmosphere.
For myself, there was particular interest in analysis of presentation
techniques as these are useful in my own  developmental programme.
The talks by Lisa and Alistair on primate behavior and conservation
were enlightening regarding chimpanzee emotional reactions to events in
their lives.    Particular reference was made to Jennie and the
traumatic  responses to her terrible treatment in the name of science.
These talks had me hunting for relevant academic papers on the
University site, thus indicating that all the imparted knowledge
remained with me.

So, I now come full circle to serendipitous experiences after not quite
knowing what to expect beforehand but thus  resulting in one of the
best experiences of a lifetime – so happy I joined.”

We were grateful for all who attended the days, and we enjoyed speaking and meeting all the volunteers over the weekend.

For more information on attending future training days, please email info@yeboyes.org

Children’s hospice primate day, May 2010

On 8th May, Yebo were invited to visit a siblings group from Noahs Ark Children’s hospice in Islington, London.  Our primate day for children consisted of our film about different primates in the world, which is geared at younger children.  The group of siblings we had were aged 4-10 years.

The film showed primates lives, the way they lived with their family groups, and how their expressions of feelings often mirrored ours.  Some of the images of monkeys with disabilities were also shown to them.  The children may have brothers or sisters who have a disability so may be able to relate to this.

The aim of the day was to discover feelings and to work together with their friends., learning about communication.

We let the children take part in various activities such as making a monkey feelings board, where the younger children drew out various emotions such as happy, laughing, sad, angry etc on monkey faces and stuck them onto a board.  The children were able to take this back with them.

We also took part in activities with the children where primate puppets, using cardboard and furry material, were made to allow the children to create their own primate with their own expression.

The children also appeared to enjoy using the Yebo primate communication board, where they stuck on different faces of expression onto the primates on the board.  As they did this the children made up stories of what was happening to the primates to cause them to have the expressions that they were changing around on the faces, which are interchangeable with velcro  backs.

The children then took part in some wildlife computer games which they appeared to enjoy and became excited when taking part in them.

The siblings days for Noahs Ark are run by Laura Harrison, family support and siblings worker.