Brighton Peace and Environment Centre
Global Xchange Volunteer Internship with Brighton Peace and Environment Centre
Global Xchange (GX) is a volunteer exchange programme mainly managed by British council and Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) and is funded by the British Airports Authority (BAA) and V, a charity aimed to inspire a million young volunteers.
The Global Xchange programme is a six-month exchange programme which gives young people from different countries a unique opportunity to work together, to develop and share valuable skills and to make a practical contribution where it is needed in local communities. It involves 18 volunteers (9 from the UK and 9 from an exchange country) ranging from the ages 18-25 years who are on a mission to become active global citizens.
Global Xchange aims to support the development of active global citizens,committed to working for positive change within communities. This is fully achieved by living and working as volunteers for three months each in the UK and the exchange community. The volunteers work and live in counterpart pairs and are involved in other team activities and task.
We (Fola and Gwennan) have completed an exchange between the UK and Nigeria. We successfully ended the first phase of the programme in Lafia (Nigeria) in December. Our final phase was based in Brighton ending the programme in March. We live in the houses of people who volunteer to host us and we do community development projects, Global citizenship advocacy and voluntary services for inhabitants in the community.
We were given the opportunity to choose between nine organisations to work as volunteers and we both considered Brighton Peace and Environment centre as our first choices. We chose BPEC because we wanted to be part of the Global citizenship activities that are carried out in the centre. We felt it was in line with the aim of our programme and we basically wanted to improve our knowledge on the global dimension. We also liked that fact that we would work with different volunteers who come in at different times of the week.
We work three times a week (Tuesday through to Thursday) from 10.30am to 6.00pm. Our outline for the working days are as follows.
Tuesday: Education Day
Cataloguing teaching resources and books
Building resource boxes
Helping with education projects
Attending training courses nationally and locally.
Wednesday: Centre Day
Fund-raising- Selling library books on Amazon website
Membership- Contacting members to evaluate service
Database- Updating, amending and improving.
Development- Searching the internet for information, materials and training.
Thursday: Project Day
Planning event, music, storytellers, fund-raising
Building a resource box/activity
Taking responsibility for an area of work/project
With this outline, we decided that on Tuesdays that we would create a new filing system for the centre's children's books and teachers' packs. We created new and more colourful labels and sorted them into new categories. These categories could also be cross-referenced since we tried to put both the teachers' packs and children's books into the same categories.
On Wednesdays we put all the old library books onto the Amazon.co.uk website in order to fundraise for the centre. We managed to sell many books so that new books could be added to update the current library. Also, we amended databases and helped with odd-jobs around the centre.
Thursdays proved a difficult day. We needed to plan some sort of event or build a resource for an area of work or a project that we could personally plan and set up. Finally, we decided on an event including a film showing. Since it is Fair trade Fortnight at the end of February (25th of Feb to 9th of March) we thought it should centre around the theme Fair Trade. We showed the film 'Black Gold', had a chocolate vote and a quiz. The evening was a great success! On top of this we planned an event for our own Global Xchange team in the centre, focusing on the theme 'Bridging the gap between cultural differences: Cuddles not Conflict'. By using the resources in the centre we were able to create a whole day of activities that our team had great fun participating in, including a few crazy icebreakers as well as some serious discussions.
Fola says "As well as gaining office and computer experience, I have learnt a great deal about Global Citizenship and living green. I have been really impressed by the number of volunteers who give their time for their community and have really enjoyed meeting many of the volunteers at the centre."
Written by Kareem Folajaiye (Fola) and Gwennan Roberts
We thank Gwennan and Fola for the work, dedication and fun they have given to the organisation over the past few months and wish them well for the future.
Brighton Peace & Environment Centre,
Address: 39-41 Surrey Street, Brighton, BN1 3PB. United Kingdom.
Tel: UK (01273) 766610
Email: info@bpec.org
Web: www.bpec.org
Company Registration No. 6166971