Liz desire to do everything is overwhelming

We’ve only been here for two and a half weeks and we only have about 12 weeks left. Exactly three months, that feels like nothing! The desire to do everything continues to be overwhelming and the anticipation of what lies next and it is an interesting inner conflict to have. Yesterday, I had my first day of my internship at loveLife.

loveLife is where I will be working for the next three months. It is an organization that receives money from three separate government agencies as well as corporate founders, such as BMW, in order to raise awareness and combat HIV/AIDS with a special focus on targeting the high risk population, which are people ages 15 to 25. The organization works through many different aspects and mediums such as creating safe spaces, Y-Centers, for children 12-17 where they can go after school and use the Internet, participate in sports, work on the radio station, and hang out. 

Another aspect to the organization is their groundBreaker program. This is a 12 month program for students that have passed grade 12, meaning they have passed their matric exams (matric exam is a standardized test given to every student in the NATION –imagine if all students in the US were held to a NATIONAL standard in order to graduate, rather than state standards– at the end of grade 12 to evaluate their educational level and to determine whether they pass or fail the grade. It’s not easy, you only need 30% correct to pass and not nearly enough pass).

The groundBreakers (gBs) tend to be students that have graduated high school and are not going to University for a variety of different reasons. (One of the gBs I met had been going to University for Political Science but had to drop out when she ran out of money.) The gB program is thus considered a Learnership with a ten day training program at the beginning of the year (training started yesterday) and short follow up programs throughout the year and then a closing training at the end of the program where the gBs will graduate. gBs are trained on the fact about HIV/AIDS and taught how to then translate and teach this information to students of all ages. gBs will spend the 12 months after training going into different schools, towns, programs, village, etc. to teach the students and people about their risk of HIV/AIDS, how to protect themselves, how to get tested, and other useful information about the HIV/AIDS epidemic. After they graduate gBs also have the opportunity to apply for exchange programs. Right now the exchange is only set up to take place in France but it’s an all expense paid trip to France. Basically, I want to be a groundbreaker!

In fact, I will be interviewing gBs on Friday and help decide who will be lucky enough to leave for France on the first of March for this amazing opportunity!

For right now I don’t really know what I will be doing next because my supervisors are out of town with the training expedition, so until Monday I’ll be learning as much as I can about loveLife and what it does.

‘Til next time peace out broskis